The Broken Road to Earth
by Field Marshal Grant
Summary: Kobol is behind them and the fleet is torn apart by the upcoming election. But then one of their Raptor recon patrols unknowingly encounters the Thirteenth Tribe. Now targeted by the military forces and allies of the Terran Dominion the Galactica and the Cylons may have both bit off more than they can chew.
1. Chapter 1

**A Battlestar Galactica / Starcraft crossover**

**Chapter One: **

**First Contact**

**Terran Dominion Naval Battle Group Trondheim**

**In orbit above Miller's Landing**

**June 11, 2510**

"Hit them again."

Fleet Admiral Ali Abdullah Mujawar's lips pulled back in a feral smile as he watched the holographic display that dominated the center of DNS _Stalingrad's _Combat Information Center. The first Yamato Cannon strike had torn most of the unholy bastard's back off; as he watched pieces of flesh broke off and gases from inside the beast transport vented in massive steam clouds. No blood though, the cannon shot had cauterized the wound.

"Yes sir," Senior Captain Rachel Hoffman said as she glanced down at her tactical readout. It would take almost a full minute before the_ Stalingrad's_ energy banks had recharged for another shot. Luckily she was far from the only ship in Battle Group Trondheim that mounted the weapon. She stabbed her finger down on the comm console.

"_Werewolf, _target your Yamato on the Leviathan."

"Acknowledged _Stalingrad," _Captain Jansson replied. The display shifted as DNS _Werewolf, _an older _Minotaur_-class battlecruiser, swung its bow up and to the left until it was pointed directly at the Leviathan's head. Hoffman and Mujawar watched as the beam lanced out from _Werewolf's _bow_, _obliterating over a dozen unlucky Mutalisks that got in the way before punching through the Leviathan's head.

"Nice shot _Werewolf_," Hoffman said. "Leviathan's vital signs are dropping. I think we killed it, sir."

Mujawar nodded, watching as another missile salvo roared out of the arsenal ship DNS _Broadsword. _The arsenal ship had come into being following the invasion of Korhal five years ago. Pretty much they were just a converted _Hercules_-class transport reinforced with armor plating, mounting point-defense guns and packed to the brim with missile pods and fire control computers. It was designed specifically to gut Zerg swarms at long range and the missiles themselves were armed with biggest, nastiest, dirtiest nuclear warheads the Terran Dominion could manufacture.

_Emperor Valerian might have forgiven Kerrigan, he might actually even trust her, but I know how much promises from that bitch are worth_, Mujawar thought. _So does the rest of the military. _Mujawar reached up with his left hand and rubbed the scar tissue on his cheek. He had been on the _NORAD III _when Kerrigan had turned on them after they had broken the back of the United Earth Directorate fleet and liberated Korhal. He had been one of only seventeen people to have survived the ship's destruction. Yes, he knew how much promises from the Queen of Blades were worth.

"Still wonder how she got into the Protoss' good graces," he muttered under his breath.

"Sir?" Hoffman asked.

"Nothing Rachel," he said as he glanced towards his flag captain. "Just talking to myself."

His eyes swung back towards the tactical display and watched as the _Broadsword's_ missiles took out the last two remaining Overlords along with their escorting Mutalisks and Vipers. Fleet Command said the Zerg that were infesting Miller's Landing were Feral, not part of Kerrigan's Swarm. Maybe they were and maybe they weren't; after all, who really expected Kerrigan to honestly abide by the agreement to completely pull out any remaining Zerg from Terran Space?

With the last remnants of command and control gone, the Mutalisk and Viper cloud dissolved into a frenzy; attacking each other almost as much as they attacked Mujawar's ships and the attacks they did manage to launch weren't coordinated. ZK-12 gauss-flak guns and ATA/ATS laser batteries blasted them as they came while squadrons of Vikings cut through them. But this was just the after-show.

The main Zerg forces in the space around Miller's Landing had been eliminated at the cost of two destroyers and a light cruiser destroyed and one of his battlecruisers crippled. Now came the hard part; rooting the bastards out planet-side and reestablishing the colonies. Within the hour Battle Group Trondheim would begin launching orbital kinetic and limited nuclear strikes to bust up the main Zerg concentrations before landing three divisions of the Dominion Army to mop up.

_Probably were Feral, _Mujawar thought as he folded his arms across his chest. _Kerrigan's Swarm would have put up more of a fight._

"Sir, Black Dog Lead reports they are picking up new radar contacts," Commander Kurt Ramius, Mujawar's tactical officer, yelled suddenly. "Three new bogies bearing four-nine, mark one-zero-nine."

"Zerg?" Hoffman asked.

"I don't know, sir," Ramius replied. "Black Dog Lead says the radar return doesn't look like any Zerg, Terran or even Protoss ship they have ever seen before. They look to be about fighter size; in fact they are giving less of a return than Vikings normally do. Range four hundred and eighty-four kilometers." He turned away from his console and looked at Mujawar directly. "But sir, we did pick them up right next to the dead Leviathan."

"Order Black Dog Lead to get a visual," Mujawar said.

**Raptor Recon Patrol**

"Oh Holy Frak, that is one frakking ugly ass mother-frakker," Lieutenant Jay "Shark" Finnegan yelled as he yanked hard on the Raptor's stick; just managing to pull up before they scrapped the side of the…thing.

"You aren't gonna get any argument from me there," Ensign Sarah "Easy" Esrin said beside him as she stared out at the creature. Or at least she thought it was a creature, though how something could live and breathe in vacuum was beyond her. Even Cylon Raiders cloaked their organic components in metal for a reason.

"Hex, Bingo!" Finnegan yelled over the comms. "Report in."

"We're fine. Gods can you…OH HOLY HERA," Bingo screamed as what looked like a skull-faced worm with leathery wings spat a glowing green glob at him, just barely missing his Raptor's fuselage.

"Take this you frakking son of a bitch," Bingo yelled as triggered his auto-cannons; firing a burst into the winged worms head. "Gods, what the hell was that thing? Frak that, what the hell is that thing? It is bigger than the _Galactica_!"

"I don't know," Finnegan yelled back. The size of thing wasn't what really bothered him though. No what really bothered him was something had ripped several massive holes in it. They weren't asteroid or meteor hits either. The cuts in the flesh were too smooth, too uniform, damn they were even cauterized. No, what made those wounds had to be a weapon of some sort and he didn't want to stick around to meet whoever, or whatever, was capable of inflicting that kind of damage on something so massive.

"Talk to me Easy," he said. "What else have we got out here?"

"DRADIS is picking up hundreds of signals, sir. Most appear to be fighter size; probably more of those Flying Skull Worms that attacked Bingo," Esrin said. She paused for the moment as she concentrated on the computer read-out. "It's hard to tell because this…creature is blocking half damn signal. But it looks like there are about three dozen or so large contacts close to five hundred klicks out bearing one-eight-seven, carom one…"

"How big?" Finnegan asked, glancing at the space monster laying dead to their side.

"Four hundred meters plus. Again sir, it's hard to say," Esrin said.

_Great, so it's either this thing's offspring or a pack of whatever killed it, _Finnegan thought. Either one was bad news. The Old Man had sent them out to look for tylium deposits, not space monsters; time to get the frak back home as far as Finnegan was concerned.

"Toasters!" Hex yelled over the wireless and Finnegan's eyes snapped up just in time to see the first of the Cylon Raiders swinging around the ruined head of the space monster.

"Well I guess we know what killed it," Finnegan muttered under his breath. How odd, though, that these Raiders appeared to be earlier models left over from the First Cylon War. _Heh, _he thought. _Thought we had destroyed the last of those when we took out the Guardian basestar._

**Black Dog Lead**

"This is Black Dog Lead to _Stalingrad,"_ Lieutenant Commander Richard "Death Dealer" Farkas said as he banked his Viking around the shattered hulk of the Feral Zerg Leviathan with the rest of the 1st Squadron of the 413th Fighter Wing, the Black Dogs, following. "We have unidentified ships in sight. They look Terran, repeat, Terran. Do not recognize make or model though."

"Acknowledged Black Dog Lead," came the reply. "Can you see any markings that might identify who they belong to?"

"Got something on the fuselage," Farkas said as he zoomed in with his gun camera. "Looks like a blue and gold circle with flames in the center; writing around the edges, can't make it out the words though. Going to try hailing th…"

Three missiles launched from the nearest ship, screaming towards Farkas' Viking. The fighter's computer reacted faster than he did, immediately popping countermeasures while the Guardian laser point defense system, standard on Dominion Vikings since the B series was introduced three years ago, opened up, downing the lead missile. He pulled the Viking into a hard right turn, g-forces slamming him back into his seat as the fighter accelerated, but it proved unnecessary, the rest of the squadron managed to down the other two missiles.

"_Stalingrad_ they just shot at us," he said.

"Weapons free, Black Dog Lead," Hoffman said over the comm. "Take them down."

**Raptor Recon Patrol**

"Frak, was that an energy weapon?" Esrin yelled. "When did the Toasters manage to build that?"

"Probably the same time they built the fleet that nuked the Colonies! Spool up the FTL now!" Finnegan ordered. "We are about swarmed by Chromejobs and we need to get this information back to the Old Man!"

"Shit, frak that," Hex yelled over the wireless. "Got two minutes before my FTL is ready! Might was well kill me some Toasters today if it's the last thing I am going to do!" He stabbed his finger on the console and flushed the remaining missiles in his pods in the direction of the incoming Raiders. Bingo immediately followed suite.

"Frak it, flush the pods Easy," Finnegan said. The Raptor shuddered as the missiles flew out of their tubes. The incoming Raiders broke formation, chaff exploding from under their wings while the lasers stabbed out. But this time there was too many missiles for their defenses to handle. Hex howled as three of the Raiders blew apart outright while a fourth spun out of control and smashed into the side of the massive dead beast. But then the remaining eleven came in full bore.

"Easy, Hex, Bingo, how long till the FTLs are ready?" Finnegan asked as the Raiders broke up into three separate groups; four gunning for Hex and three apiece for his Raptor and Bingo's.

"One minute, thirty seconds for me. Relax Shark, we can take them. We have faced worse odds before and there ain't no way a Toaster can outfly us," Hex said as he triggered an autocannon burst into the leading Raider but the enemy's armor held.

"Oh Frak," Hex hissed as he pulled on the stick, banking hard as all four of the Raiders targeting him fired in unison.

"How heavily armored are these things?" Hex screamed as he triggered another burst into another Raider with no effect. The space around the Leviathan descended into a furball as Finnegan's Raptors engaged in brutal dogfight with the Cylon Raiders.

_They're not old style Raiders,_Finnegan realized as he fired his autocannons into a Raider's underbelly and was rewarded as flames shot out and rolled along the underside of the enemy fighter. They were too heavily armored, too fast and there was something very odd about the way they were constructed; it looked almost like they had legs tucked up into the fuselage. Not to mention that laser point defense system. After all, why would the Cylons put something like that on a platform that was several decades obsolete when the newer Raiders lacked it? No, these Raiders were something new.

But now the enemy's superior numbers began to tell. There was a faint scream over the wireless as Bingo's Raptor blew up.

"Sir!" Esrin yelled. "More Toasters incoming!"

Finnegan looked up and snarled as twenty more Raiders came screaming around the front of the dead space beast. This wasn't a fight they were going to win.

"Hex, we're leaving," Finnegan ordered. "Easy, the FTL ready?"

"Yes," she said.

"Mine is t…" Hex died mid-sentence as a Raider blew his cockpit to pieces.

"Frak, Easy punch it," Finnegan screamed. Esrin's hand reached for the control but three enemy rounds punched through the cockpit windows and slammed into her, shredding her upper torso into a bright red mist that was promptly sucked out through the holes the shells made coming in. Finnegan didn't even think, he just reached over and stabbed his finger down on the control panel. The Raptor jumped, narrowly missing another autocannon burst.

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Note:<strong> I am trying to portray the Dominion Navy as a real fleet, which means more warship types as opposed to the vanilla game. Destroyers and cruisers are mentioned in the _Starcraft _books so I am not exactly on shaky ground here. Also since this story takes place five years after _Heart of the Swarm _I felt it was only natural that new weapons and warship classes had been introduced and existing platforms had undergone upgrades. I am assuming Kerrigan and the Protoss succeed in killing the Big Bad in the next installment of course. In the _Galactica_ time line; this takes place shortly after the events depicted in _Razor _but before _Lay Down Your Burdens. _


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter Two:**

**Homecoming**

**Baltar's Lab**

****Colonial Fleet****

**June 11, 2510**

Gaius Baltar's hands were shaking as he took a sip from the glass, spilling Ambrosia down his chin and the front of his shirt. _Not possible, _he kept thinking over and over again. _Not possible, not frakking possible! Not here, not now!_

"What's the matter Gaius?" a blond haired woman in a red dress said as she materialized beside him. She gripped his shoulders as she whispered into his ear. "I thought you would be happy to know the fleet wasn't running around the galaxy on some wild goose chase. You were looking for the Thirteenth Tribe and you have found them."

Gaius turned and looked at her, his mouth working but no words coming out, before turning back towards the monitor. The image on it wasn't out of the ordinary; a woman and a man sitting behind a news desk. Neither looked unusual; the woman had shoulder-length raven-black hair and wore a black jacket over a plain white shirt. The man had crew cut red hair and a neatly trimmed beard and wore a gray suit. Except the words coming out of their mouths were no language that Baltar had ever heard before and the video footage that played in the upper right-hand corner of the screen showed images of creatures that Baltar had never seen before.

"Trouble understanding what they are saying, Gaius?" Number Six said as she caressed his head. "Let's fix that, shall we?"

All at once the words coming from the speakers became clear.

"With the last of the Feral Zerg being weeded out many in the Senate are questioning the need for increasing the military budget. Emperor Valerian and Defense Minister Novitski released joint statements today saying that though the Zerg no longer pose a threat we must be remember that the Zerg are not the only enemies we have faced over the years. Emperor Valerian made reference to recent reconnaissance reports showing that the United Earth Directorate may be preparing for another incursion into Dominion space."

The image switched to a blond haired man in a black and red military uniform with gold trim, flanked by bodyguards as he stood behind a podium. A red shield showing what looked a golden arm and hand clutching a whip underneath a star hung on a black banner behind him. Despite the speaker's youthful appearance Baltar knew he had to be of fairly high rank just by how flashy the uniform was. The bastard had a frakking cape for God's sake.

"Nobody here can forget the brutal and unprovoked invasion by the United Earth Directorate during the Brood War ten years ago; a war that nearly crushed our great nation within its infancy. Just as nobody can deny that they still have designs on the Koprulu Sector. For the Directorate the universe is black and white; either you are part of the Directorate and adhere to their ideas of what humanity should constitute or you are an enemy of humanity and you will be put down like a rabid dog.

Within the Directorate there is no freedom of religion or freedom of speech or any other freedom for expression and individuality. Shall we risk everything we have achieved in the last five years since the Invasion of Korhal because we have become complacent? Should we pay the price for our continued freedoms or should we just submit under the Directorate jackboot? And how many of us would survive under that boot? Do not forget the institutions that created Project Purification are still alive and well within the Directorate and the ideology that drove the death squads and extermination camps three hundred years ago still drives the UED today."

_Death squads and extermination camps? _Baltar's legs felt like they were made of solid rubber all of a sudden.

The screen switched back to the news desk. The raven-haired woman started speaking again. "Senator Goodman immediately criticized the Emperor's speech saying that it has been ten years since the UED Expeditionary Fleet arrived in the Koprulu Sector and its subsequent defeat by the Triple Alliance. There have been no further UED incursions since then. Why should we expect that to change now?"

The red haired man smiled. "Thank you, Kate. That wraps up today's political briefing. In more personal news, former UNN chief anchor Donny Vermillion is being released from…"

Six reached over and turned the monitor off.

"You have to bring this to the attention of Adama and Roslin," she said.

"Are you crazy?" Balter hissed. "I have been running on a platform of settling down on that frakking planet. If I go public with this," he motioned towards the powered down monitor, "it will prove Roslin was right to stay the course. Everybody, even Zarek, will be forced to admit she lead us to the Thirteenth Tribe; that she and Adama were right all along. It will be political suicide."

"You don't have a choice Gaius. An hour from now the news technicians on-board the _Cloud 9 _are going to stumble onto that signal and about two dozen others. It's going to take them another hour or so to realize what they are looking at. The only reason _Galatica _and _Pegasus_ haven't picked it up is because they aren't monitoring those frequencies."

Six smiled. "Something of an oversight on Adama's, well actually more like Tigh's, part but nobody is perfect. And let's not forget about the reconnaissance patrols. We are on the edges of the Terran Dominion's borders; in fact the fleet is technically just inside of them. What do you think is going happen sooner or later?"

The smile widened. "In fact, it is happening as we speak."

"Terran Dominion?" Baltar asked. Than his eyes widened in horror as the implication of Six's words finally registered. "One of the patrols ran into their colonies?"

"Actually they ran into one of their fleets and took a shot at one of their fighter squadrons." She chuckled. "Too bad their main line fighter looks a lot like the older Raiders from the First Cylon War. It's rather easy to confuse the two at a distance, especially when you are already panicking."

Baltar's jaw dropped. "They shot at them?"

Six nodded. "The lone survivor of that engagement will be back here within the next six hours. They are going to do a few random jumps to throw off any pursuers before hightailing it back home. Unfortunately, the Dominion battle group is going to salvage the wreckage of the other two Raptors and access the nav-computers. They will have some trouble with the language barrier but they will be able to retrieve several sets of coordinates. Than you will have two days at the most before some of their warships pay the fleet a visit."

"So the only way you are going to salvage any of your political aspirations is if you go directly to Adama and Roslin before anybody else brings this to their attention," she said. "William Adama may back Roslin but he is an honest man at heart and he will give credit where credit is due. If you are the first one to bring this to his attention you will be the one to get the credit for discovering the Thirteenth Tribe, well at least some of the credit, because Adama will make sure your contributions are known in the end. He won't like it and he will gripe about it but he will do it. "

She wiped the Ambrosia from his chin. "You only have a few minutes to spare so clean yourself up. It won't help your case if you show up looking like a drunken bum."

**Raptor 718**

A flicker of pseudo-motion marked Finnegan's return to the fleet. The last few hours had been a living hell as he had jumped system to system while his mind filled with images of Cylon super-weapons decimating the fleet. And all the while Esrin's severed legs had remained beside him, secured in place by the seat-belt. Finally, after about the eighth jump he had become convinced that nobody was following him.

"Shark, took you long enough to get back," Lieutenant Brendan "Hotdog" Costanza said over the wireless. Finnegan watched as Costanza swung his viper out of his patrol grid and headed towards him. "Where are Hex and Bingo?"

"Dead, along with Easy; ran into Toasters packing some new hardware. And Hotdog I think we are about to have some serious problems."

**Battlestar **_**Galatica: **_**Adama's Quarters**

Admiral William Adama buried his face into the palm of his hands, messaging his temples with his fingertips. Right now he didn't know if he was going to burst out laughing or break down crying; gods knew he felt like doing both at the same time. It was real, wasn't it? A part of him still hadn't really believed in the Thirteenth Tribe, even after Kobol, but now the reality was starring him in the face.

"The news crews on _Cloud 9 _just confirmed they are picking up the same broadcasts as Baltar," he said as he leaned back in his chair. "_Galatica_ and _Pegasus _are also picking them up now that we are scanning the frequencies Baltar told us to look for. Over three dozen programs; news crews speaking in a language we can't identify, showing images of ships, planets, cities, creatures we have never seen before; entertainment programs starring actors we have never watched before speaking the same alien language; music we have never heard before in the same language; advertisements for products that shouldn't exist. And not one of the people on any of the broadcasts is a known skinjob."

_And lot of those broadcasts seemed to deal with a war between humans and an alien race. _At least that's what he thought those images were of and a lot of them looked too realistic to be fictional, especially since that alien race appeared on what were, correction what they thought were, the news. But he chose not to mention that fact out loud as he turned in his chair and looked directly at Laura Roslin, President of the Twelve Colonies. "Transmissions from the Thirteenth Tribe."

Tears were running down Roslin's face as she spoke. "And Gaius Baltar found them. I am starting to think the gods have a really nasty sense of humor."

"He got lucky Laura," Adama said. "The newsies on _Cloud 9 _also picked up the same transmissions at around the same time Baltar did. They just didn't realize what they were looking at before Baltar showed them to me."

"Yes, Baltar seems to have been born lucky," Roslin said as she wiped her face. "No matter how bad the situation is he always manages to come out alright in the end. How exactly did Baltar say he found them anyway?"

"Said he was trying to watch the opinion polls from the _Cloud 9 _news broadcast on the TV he assembled from scrap when he punched in the wrong frequency," Adama muttered. "Seems like a perfectly reasonable explanation but I got the feeling he is lying. Why, I don't know."

Roslin smiled at Adama. "Knowing Gaius I am not sure I want to know how he really stumbled onto the broadcast. Still, I suppose I should look on the bright side. Baltar may have been the first to notice the transmissions from the Thirteenth but it was my decisions that put him in a position to do so in the first place. If he had his way we would be settling down on that planet right now; completely oblivious to how close we are to the Thirteenth."

Roslin shook her head. "It's amazing how close we are. If we are reading the star map we saw on their news program correctly we're are less than ten light years away from two of their colonies. You think the voters will remember that at the ballots?"

"They will Laura," Adama said. "The problem we have right now is that we are not going to keep this contained for long. The news crews are already bitching about the gag order and few of the other civilian ships are starting stumble onto the transmissions. You need to prepare a statement because this is going to go public in the next few hours, one way or another."

Roslin chuckled. "Oh joy. You sure we can't just head to one of their colonies?"

She raised her hand when she saw his expression. "I'm joking Bill. We got a language barrier to overcome and I have seen too many images of what look like soldiers, military vehicles and warships on those broadcasts in the last three hours to think we are dealing with an entirely peaceful society. Did you see the armor some of those soldiers were wearing? I thought they were Cylons until I saw one with his visor flipped up."

"I saw," Adama said. The image had been disturbing on more levels than one.

"Speaking of the language barrier," Roslin said. "I hate to think that we are going to end up relying on Baltar again. Do you honestly think that bastard can actually write a translation program like he says he can?"

Adama snorted. "If he doesn't you can just chuck him out the airlock."

"Don't tempt me, Bill," Roslin said with a laugh. "Seriously, don't tempt me."

"I don't th…" the phone ringing on Adama's desk cut him off mid-sentence. He lifted up the receiver. "This is the Admiral."

Roslin watched as he listened and his face slowly turned ashen. _Gods, what's gone wrong now? _She thought. Why did it seem like everything tended to go the hell right when things were starting to look up?

"I will be right there," he said and put down the receiver. Then he looked up at Laura, his expression grim. "One of our Raptor recon patrols just jumped back in system. Or what's left of it. Seems they got into a shooting match with a new type of Cylon Raider mounting previously unseen weaponry and defensive technology."

_New type of Cylon Raider? _Roslin repeated in her mind. _Mounting unknown weapons and..._ Her stomach condensed into an icy ball as her mind latched on to a horrible suspicion.

"Bill, you don't think that…" the words died in her throat. _Gods, please don't let it be so! Please, let it really be Cylons they fought!_

"We need to get down to the hanger," Adama said as he stood up.


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter Three: Chasing Shadows**

_**New Gettysburg**_**-class battleship DNS **_**Stalingrad**_

**In orbit above Miller's Landing**

**Early Morning June 12, 2510**

The insect-like Raven surveillance drone cruised silently through the night. Acidic rain, mixed in with atmospheric dust caused by the preliminary nuclear and kinetic strikes, streaked down its sides and left greasy trails upon its hull.

"God, what a mess," Specialist (Second Class) Lisa Davis said as she rubbed her eyes. After starring at the same blasted landscape through the grainy video feed for last three and half hours it was taking a sheer act of willpower and liberal doses of caffeine to stay awake. Miller's Landing had been just barely habitable for humans before the Zerg had come and it hadn't improved since then.

"And I thought Mar Sara was desolate," she muttered. The only difference was that Miller's Landing was more snow and ice than scorching sand.

"Home sick Lisa?" Sergeant Major Chris Billingsley asked as he came up behind her and leaned on the drone operator's chair.

"Yes sir, I want to go back home like I want a bullet in the head, sir," Davis said as she picked up her coffee mug. Damn it, empty. And so was the coffee pot up against the other wall.

"I will brew up some more, Lisa. God knows you need it," Billingsley said as he walked off. He had just taken out the old filter and grains when Davis said, "I got movement. A hydralisk and a pack of zerglings just came out of a cave."

Billingsley turned and walked back towards Davis's chair, filter with the old coffee grounds still in hand. Sure enough, twenty-eight dog-like zerglings were running across the open plain at full gallop with the snake-like hydralisk struggling to keep up.

"Switch to thermal scan," Billingsley said. Davis tapped on the touch screen display and the entire mountain valley lit up.

"Jesus Christ, how many of them are down there?" Davis asked.

"Oh I am guessing as many as that cave system can hold," Billingsley said. Through the differences in temperature variation could pick out the faint outline of no less than three hives. "Time to call the brass."

* * *

><p>"No sir, there are no known ore, mineral or vespene deposits in the area," Lieutenant General Monica Savoia, commander of the Dominion Army's 19th Corp, said as she sat in Mujawar's stateroom. "And the valley is a good distance away from the old Confederate colony and military base. We can saturate the area with nuclear and kinetic strikes without affecting our salvage operations."<p>

"Oh I am sure there is vespene down there, Monica," Mujawar said as he spread jam onto his croissant. "What else would the Zerg be using to using as a source of nourishment? They have wiped out most of the local wildlife. I am pretty sure if we run a full geological survey of the area will get electromagnetic returns from the gas."

"Sir, Miller's Landing isn't exactly lacking in vespene deposits; especially in the area around the old Confederate colony and military base. What deposits we would gain access to if we sent my boys into the tunnels to clear out the Zerg wouldn't be worth the casualties."

Mujawar took a bite out his croissant, chewing silently as he mulled over Monica's request.

"You are probably right," he said after a few seconds. "Nuke them."

* * *

><p>It took thirty-four minutes for the <em>Gorgon<em>-class battlecruiser DNS _Anubis_ to get into position; it was one of six ships in Battle Group Trondheim carrying the 'clean' strategic nukes used for large scale planetary bombardment. Missile hatches opened along the ship's flanks, exposing the Mark IV Gehenna anti-planetary missiles to the vacuum. In a twist of bitter historical irony, the Mark IV Gehenna was a direct descendant of the _Apocalypse_-class missiles that the Confederacy had used to devastate Korhal nineteen years ago; an event that had given birth to the Sons of Korhal and later the Terran Dominion itself.

Four Gehennas shot out of their tubes and quickly accelerated to nearly ten times the speed of sound; covering the three hundred and eighty-five kilometers from the _Anubis _to the Zerg infested valley in the proverbial blink of an eye. At fifty kilometers above the valley floor their nose cones split open, revealing a dozen five megaton warheads each which promptly separated and vectored off in multiple directions. They hit the ground well before the sonic boom announced their atmospheric entry; borrowing through the snow, ice and rock before punching through into the cave system below.

"God, ain't you ever seen such a beautiful sight?" Davis asked as the forty-eight warheads detonated in unison.

"Nope," Billingsley said as he watched the feed from the Raven drone thirty kilometers from ground zero, the camera shaking all over the place as the blast wave slammed into the drone's side. "Saw a Ghost call in a few tactical strikes five years ago; ten to twenty kiloton range. Nothing like this though."

Billingsley smiled as the massive mushroom cloud rose into the night sky, illuminated by the nuclear fires raging below. "How do you like your Zerg, Davis? Original or extra crispy?"

* * *

><p><strong>Cylon Basestar<strong>

**Four light years away from Miller's Landing**

_I shouldn't have to do this_, the Number One thought as he sliced off a portion of the steak. _Eating. A repulsive biological necessity; a crude and inefficient means of acquiring energy. Frak, it makes the batteries on the old U-87s look advanced._ He cursed the Final Five once again, especially Ellen Tigh, for placing him in this body; modeled after her biological father no less! Talk about Daddy issues.

"We aren't human so why should be pretend to be so?" he muttered.

"Did I catch you at a bad time?" one of the Number Fives said as he walked into the room, a Number Four following behind him.

"I thought I made it clear I did not want to be disturbed," One said.

"You'll want to be for this," Five said as he clasped his arms behind his back. "One of our Heavy Raiders just returned from its patrol. It reports that its long-range sensors picked up the tell-tale signs of multiple nuclear detonations."

"Is that a fact?" One said as he pushed his plate away and stood up. "Where?"

"A system four light-years away," Four said. "The Raider couldn't get too close without alerting the Colonials and it couldn't get an accurate reading on their ships at such a long range but their fleet is in orbit above the second planet of the system."

One walked over and placed his hand into the cool waters of the room's data-font, the bio-circuitry glowing as he accessed the ship's datastream.

"There is no way the Colonials have that many nukes left," One said as he pulled his hand out. "And the energy readings from the Colonial Fleet are off. The Raider's sensors need to be re-calibrated."

"I will begin work on that shortly," Four said.

"So gentlemen, what do you think is the most likely cause of the nuclear blasts?" One asked as he walked back to the table, picked up the plate with the half-eaten steak on it and tossed it into the garbage.

"Our warships have not engaged the human fleet in the last three weeks and we have led them to believe there is a cease-fire in effect," Four said. One's lips twisted into a sneer at the words. Some, like Caprica Six, hoped to make the cease-fire genuine. _What a repulsive thought._

"Since it is not the result of a battle between their fleet and ours," Four continued. "The highest probabilities are either accidental detonation in _Galactica _or _Pegasus's_ armory or one of our sleeper agents has succeeded in acquiring access to the Colonials' limited nuclear arsenal."

"Either way their fleet has been decimated and one, possibly both, of the battlestars has been destroyed," Five said, his lips pulling back in tight smile.

"And that means they are vulnerable," One said, returning Five's smile. It was almost enough to make one believe in Divine Providence after all. And right now he was tempted to take the basestar in and finish off the survivors. But no, there was still a chance that one of the battlestars was still operational. Why risk them getting away again?

"Plot a course back to The Colony. We need to bring this to the attention of the others."

* * *

><p><strong>DNS <strong>_**Stalingrad**_

**In orbit above Miller's Landing**

**Late afternoon June 12, 2510**

"What was so important that you couldn't email me, Lieutenant?" Captain Samuel Al-Ahmar, Naval Intelligence, asked as he leaned on the shattered hulk of the mystery gunship. Massive hydraulics whined behind him as an elevator brought an AH/G-24 Banshee, modified for space flight, down from the main hangar into the engineering bay. Six similar craft already stood in the bay, their technicians busy prepping them for another sortie planet-side.

Senior Lieutenant David Carasso stepped down the ramp and handed Al-Ahmar a plaque he had just unscrewed from underneath gunship's main control console.

"Do you recognize this language, sir?" he asked. Al-Ahamer lifted it up into the light, wiping away soot and dried blood to get a better look at the letters.

"Builder's plaque of some sort from the look of it," Al-Ahamer said. "Variant of the golden and blue insignia on the hull. Lettering isn't standard nor is it Cyrillic, Arabic or Chinese calligraphy."

Al-Ahamer frowned. There was something blasted familiar about the lettering. Something he had seen back in his university days on Tyrador VIII. His fingers tightened around the plaque. Damn it, he was sure he had seen something like these letters there; he just couldn't remember what.

"Specialist Rabinovich tried cross-referencing the letters with the ship's database and when that didn't work he went net-surfing," Carasso said as he pointed to a lanky young man in grease stained coveralls, his face hidden behind a cybernetic visor, busy unhooking power cables from a nearby portable generator. "The closest match he was able to get was the Greek Alphabet…"

_That was it_, Al-Ahamer thought. That was what the lettering reminded him of.

"…but these letters still aren't an exact match. But we tried running the letters through an on-line conversion program for the Greek alphabet to English alphabet anyway and got a bunch of gibberish. So we tried running _that_ through an online translation program for Greek to English and Ancient Greek to English and just got more gibberish in both cases."

"So we can't salvage anything from the craft's computer systems?" Al-Ahamer asked. _Admiral Mujawar isn't going to like this._

"I didn't say that sir," Carasso said. "Rabinovich, get your ass over here!"

The specialist dropped the cables he was carrying, ran up towards Carasso and Al-Ahamer and came to attention. "Sir!"

"Tell the Captain what you told me," Carasso ordered.

"Yes sir! Captain Al-Ahamer, while it is true that I cannot decipher the language to pull flight records from what I think is the gunship's black box, the nav-computer," Rabinovich snorted as he said the words, "is another story. I…"

"You find something amusing, Specialist?" Al-Ahamer asked.

"Well sir, it's just the computer on this thing looks like a reject from the Twentieth Century," Rabinovich said. "I mean it is primitive; I am half-way surprised I didn't see vacuum tubes when I took a look at its guts. My watch has more computing power."

"Wouldn't that cause problems if we tried to hook our machines up to it?" Al-Ahamer said. "I am no computer expert, but I have had enough problems trying to get new software to run on that seven-year old POS desktop my wife has at home to understand the problem you're facing here."

Rabinovich nodded. "It would sir, but I don't think we need to. The pilot and co-pilot were killed while one was trying to access a set of coordinates; which means I don't have to hack the encryption. And while their language might as well be an alien dialect as far as I am concerned mathematics is the universal language and they use the Arabic numerals, or something very close to it. Plus the system is designed by humans, so graphic representation of their astro-charts, while different from ours, is easy to understand."

"So you can tell me where this ship has been?" Al-Ahamer asked.

"And where it was headed," Rabinovich said. He paused for a second before adding, "At least I think I can."

"Well, get to it. Pull what coordinates you can and email them to," Al-Ahamer ordered as he turned and headed back towards the tram. A_ New Gettysburg_-class battleship was over twice the length of the _Gorgon_-class battlecruiser he had served on previously; sixteen hundred and fifty-eight meters to be exact. Since it would take about half-an-hour to walk from one end of the ship to the other, several small electro-magnetic tram lines ran throughout the ship to quickly move crew and supplies the same distance in less than five minutes.

He settled into the passenger seat and continued the stare at the plaque. Odds were the gunship didn't come from the United Earth Directorate; those bastards had banned every language but English. Still it could be a UED code of some kind but if what Carasso and Rabinovich said about the computers was true it was doubtful. Why disguise the builder's plaque of an antique? Hell, why would you even send an antique into a potential battle against the most powerful space navy threatening your star nation?

And if it was such an antique that meant that it probably didn't come from the Umojan Protectorate either. So most likely the gunship was a custom-job built by some pirates, or a mercenary group like Raynor's Raiders, or it was the product of some backwards colony outside of the Dominion. And since most pirates didn't bother with little things like builders plaques that meant these gunships had most likely come from independent colony world outside the Dominion's borders and one with a more primitive tech base than the Dominion.

"So why fire on our Vikings?" he muttered. _You would think they would be happy about us killing Feral Zerg. _Unless, of course, the Zerg weren't Feral after all. Could they be dealing with another Alan Schezar here?

Al-Ahamer shook his head_. No, we have seen no evidence that was the case here. And why use a different alphabet and language? Most colonies outside the Sol system hadn't been founded until after the rise of the United Powers League. English should have been the common language if they had been sent out to colonize or die like we had and only a little over three centuries has passed since the UPL was founded. Not enough time for the languages to have diverged too drastically, wasn't it?_

Still, if Rabinovich could pull the nav-coordinates out of that gunship he was sure the Admiral would detach one of the battlecruiser squadrons, along with a destroyer screen, to investigate them. _Then we will have some answers._

He was back in his office when the report arrived from the DNS _Virulence,_one of the destroyer pickets dotting the Miller System. It had picked up an unknown ship, roughly the same size as the one being torn apart in the rear starboard engineering bay, on its long-range Lidar moments before it had jumped out of system.

"This day just keeps getting more interesting," he whispered to himself.

* * *

><p><em><strong>Cloud 9<strong>_

**Baltar's Quarters**

"You really ought to quick smoking Gaius," Six said as she reached over and yanked the cigarette out of his mouth before stabbing it into the ash tray.

"Listen, I smoke to relieve stress," Baltar said as he turned away from keyboard and reached into his pocket for the pack. "And stress is the only thing I have had in abundance since the Fall; which is largely _your_ fault. I have got so much stress that I am surprised I haven't suffered a nervous breakdown and/or a heart attack; though God knows you haven't tried to give me one!"

He pointed towards the monitor. "Like this frakking program here. You know their language! Why can't you just wave your hand, like you did when I first saw their news broadcast, which _you_ pointed out to me in the first place, and just write up a program that does the job? Why do I have to write it? I am no linguist; Adama and Roslin know I am no linguist despite the load of bull I fed them. So why do I have to write it? Tell me!"

"God helps those who help themselves," Six said. Baltar's lips pulled back in a snarl and he started to speak before she cut him off. "Besides, if you walked into Adama's office less than a day after discovering the broadcasts with a perfect translation program for a language nobody on the Fleet has heard of before Adama and Roslin might get more than a little suspicious. In fact, I am sure Adama would have some pointed questions for you. He would probably have Tigh do the asking with some rather pointed instruments given the mood he is in right now. So the program's development needs to take time and it needs to look like a work in progress."

Baltar's face paled. She was exaggerating, he knew she was, but Adama had been pissed ever since Raptor 718 had returned to the _Galactica._

"So what happens if their warships show up before I can get the translation program finished?" Baltar demanded. "You told me we only had a few days before they came looking for us and thanks to our great and glorious frak-ups of pilots they think we are hostile. What's going to happen if their equivalent to a battlestar group jumps in system on top of us and demands our surrender?"

"If that happens, things are going to get interesting Giaus," she said with a smile.

"That isn't an answer," Baltar muttered. He leaned back in his chair as he stuck another cigarette in his mouth and reached for his lighter. Six yanked it out of his mouth and tore it in half before he had even picked the lighter up off his desk.

"You're lucky I can't strangle you," Baltar said as he glared at her. He folded his arms across his chest. "You say it's going to be interesting when their warships arrive and for some reason you don't seem to want us to be able to talk to them. So…"

"I do want you to be able to talk to them Giaus," Six said. "You are not listening. I just don't want you to destroy your credibility with Adama and Roslin to do so. Or do you want them to suspect you might have some…non-human help in your endeavors?"

"Ok, I get your point," Baltar said. He reached down and opened his desk drawer and pulled out a half-empty bottle of Ambrosia. "Since you don't want me to smoke you have problem with me drinking this?"

"A man needs a few vices lest he go insane," Six said.

"How wonderfully hypocritical of you," Baltar said as he unscrewed the cap and took a swig. The Ambrosia burned in his throat on the way down. He screwed the top back on and slammed the bottle back into the desk drawer.

"Now how am I going to pull this off?" he muttered as he turned back towards the half-written line of code on his monitor.

* * *

><p>"Now run this by me again Lieutenant, you fired first. Is that correct?" Colonel Saul Tigh said as he leaned over the table and glared at Finnegan.<p>

"No sir, Hex did," Finnegan said as he rubbed his eyes. "He fired a salvo of three missiles at the lead Raider; their new point defense system intercepted it. That was when we all flushed the missiles in our pods at the incoming Raiders."

He smiled at the memory. "That laser point defense system might make what we got look like crap but no matter how good it is it still takes a second or so to retarget after destroying a missile. A second is long time in dog-fight with a missile closing in on you at Mach Twelve so our weight of fire managed to overwhelm them and with that dead space beast right beside them they had limited room to pull evasive maneuvers. Sure, it's a problem but not an insurmounta…"

His smile and words died as he saw the look on the Colonel's face.

"_Lieutenant, do you have any frakking idea what you have done?"_Tigh yelled, the veins in his neck popping out.

"Killed Toasters, sir!" Finnegan snapped back. "Sir, with all due respect, you can't believe that talk of a truce that Skinjob was spouting when we brought him back from Caprica!" He slammed his fists on the table. "We did our job! Easy, Hex, Bingo, Smoker and Night Hammer died doing it! So why I have been locked in this damn briefing room ever since I got back, placed under armed guard and I keep getting asked the same questions by you, the Admiral, Captain Thrace, Chief Tyrol, Lieutenant Gaeta, even President Roslin. What did we do wrong?!"

He didn't get answer. Tigh just glared at him silently for a minute before storming out of the briefing room; the hatch slamming loudly behind him.

"You could go easier on him," Kara Thrace said as she fell into step beside Tigh in the corridor outside the briefing room.

"When I want your opinion Captain, I will give it to you," Tigh said. "And what I should do is throw him out the airlock! Gaeta and Tyrol just finished comparing Finnegan's gun camera footage to the images we have taken from the Thirteenth broadcasts. Tyrol says he is ninety percent sure that what Finnegan's patrol engaged was one of their space fighter squadrons, not Cylon Raiders, and Gaeta agrees with that assessment. Go easy on him? Mr. Finnegan made first contact with the Thirteenth Tribe and he shot at them! I hardly think that deserves a pat on the back; how about you Captain?"

"Sir, I know Finnegan and his flight frakked up big time," Thrace said after a moment's hesitation. "But those fighters of the Thirteenth look a lot like the older model Raiders from a distance and the older Raiders are still fresh in everybody's mind after the battle we had with the Guardian Basestar. And the Thirteenth fighters were coming in hot."

Tigh turned and glared at her.

"They were, Colonel. I also talked to Tyrol while you were grilling Shark. He pulled the sensor readings from Raptor 718. They had our Raptors lit up like a neon display the moment they banked around that beast's head. Also the sensors picked up radiation spikes indicating multiple nuclear detonations within excess of three _hundred_ megatons minutes before Shark's flight jumped in system. I am not going comment on the fact that neither us or the Toasters managed to build nukes that come close to that kind of yield. The fact that matters, sir, is that they blundered into somebody else's war and it's not their fault for what happened!"

"Well, I am sure the civilians on the fleet will take that into consideration when Roslin makes her address within the hour," Tigh said. "I am sure they will be happy to hear Jay Finnegan and crew found the Thirteenth Tribe and that they are not to blame for getting us into a shooting war with them. Yes, mobs are always so understanding, aren't they? And maybe, if the gods are merciful, the understanding mob will be satisfied with simply having him shot as opposed to being skinned alive before being thrown out the airlock! Now if you will excuse me, I have to go and find a way to head off a repeat of the Abinell incident."

Thrace's hands balled into fists. _Oh Artemis, I want to punch his lights out right now._ But deep down she knew Tigh had a point. When the news broke about what happened during the first contact with the Thirteenth the fleet would be howling for Shark's blood. And she remembered how Lee and several others had come close to being killed by Sesha Abinell for merely keeping the Caprica-copy of Sharon Valerii a prisoner instead of putting a hole through her forehead. A "crime" that paled in comparison to what Shark had done. She knew that if Admiral Adama thought it was the only way to maintain order in the fleet Shark would be court-martialed. The Old Man wouldn't like doing it, but he would do it anyway. But that didn't make what was likely going to happen to Shark right or that she had to like it.

She turned and headed back towards the briefing room.

"Where are you going?" Tigh demanded over his shoulder.

"The condemned has a right to know why he is about to be offered up as a sacrificial lamb," Thrace said without looking back.

* * *

><p><em><strong>Cloud 9<strong>_

**Forty minutes later**

_Zeus, give me strength to get through this,_Laura Roslin thought as she fought to hold back tears. This was going to be the hardest speech she ever had to give; harder even than the ones she had given after the Fall. Her impossible dream, finding the Thirteenth Tribe, had been fulfilled; only to be tainted first by Baltar's involvement and now threatened to turn into a nightmare due to the actions of less than a dozen Raptor crewmen. Living without hope in the wake of a disaster like the Fall was one thing; having your hope realized before being corrupted and then brutally snatched away was something else.

Something much worse.

Harsh white lights illuminated her podium, nearly blinding her in the process. But they weren't bright enough that she couldn't make out Tom Zarek's smirking face out of the corner of her eye. She and Bill had briefed the Quorum of Twelve personally about the recent developments earlier that morning. And it didn't take a mind reader to know that Zarek was already drooling over how the encounter between the Thirteenth fighters and the Raptors would damage her and Bill's reputations and how he could use it to undermine her re-election bid.

_Well, I got a little surprise for you Tom and you aren't going to like it one bit. _She smiled at the thought and had the satisfaction of watching Zarek's smirk disappear when he noticed that smile.

"I would like to thank you all for coming," Roslin said into the mike. "I know the upcoming election, the rescue mission to Caprica and the news of the Cylon cease-fire are on everybody's minds right now. I know that many of you also wish to quit running, to give up searching for Earth and the Thirteenth Tribe and settle down on the planet that many are calling New Caprica. Unfortunately, new developments have rendered that discussion moot."

"Settle down," she said motioning with her hands at the crowd's reaction. "Please let me finish." She waited a moment for the noise to die down. "Thank you. As I have said, new developments have rendered that discussion moot. Yesterday, our ships began to pick up unusual transmissions; many of the technicians in the news crews assembled before me were among the first to notice them, along with Gaius Baltar. We have confirmed that these transmissions are from the Thirteenth Tribe and that we are less than ten light years away from their outer-most colonies. So the discussion we need to be having now is not whither we keep running or settle down on New Caprica but whither we make contact with the Thirteenth and ask for asylum."

For a minute there was complete, deafening silence. Then it started, at first a few shouts and crying but soon it built up into screaming roar that rivaled the best fans in the Pyramid stadiums on Caprica could have done; the physical force of which threatened to knock her off the podium.

_I hate to tell them about the Raptors, _she thought. _They ought to have a few days, or at least a few hours, of happiness before they learn what else transpired yesterday. I wish I didn't have to tell them at all. I don't want them to feel what I feel right now._ She glanced over in Zareck's direction. _But if I don't tell them he will. He might not say anything right now but he will definitely leak the story to the press. Its better they hear it from me; if only to deprive that bastard of the satisfaction._

"Order! Please settle down!" She yelled. The crowd refused to pay her any heed. _Damn it, I feel almost like I'm back in the classroom again._

In the back of the crowd, the Number Six copy known as Gina Inviere felt her jaw go slack. _This couldn't be happening. _Everything she had worked so hard to achieve the last few months had just been undone. Demand Peace was dead; after all, what was the point of making peace with the Cylons if the Thirteenth Tribe was right next door? She almost rushed out of the crowd and ran back to the nuke Gaius had given her. Her desire to lash out, to make the Colonials feel the pain she felt, the pain she had endured at their hands was overwhelming. But no, she wouldn't do that. Not with Gaius onboard the _Cloud 9_.

The crowd died down and Roslin began to speak again.

"Unfortunately, we have two problems in attempting to communicate with the Thirteenth," Roslin said. "One is a language barrier, the dialect of Thirteenth has diverged considerably in the millennia we have been separated. The other problem is that something else transpired yesterday. One of our Raptor patrols encountered a fleet belonging to the Thirteenth and…"

She paused for a close to a minute and when she resumed speaking her voice threatened to break, "…and mistook their fighters for Cylon Raiders. Shots were fired. And in light of the developing situation, I have decided to temporarily post-pone the elections until after we have established peaceful communications with the Thirteenth."

Tom Zarek bolted out of his chair, his face a mask of rage but his shouts were soon lost in the massed screams of anger, panic and denial as the full force of Roslin's words hit home. Slowly, a smile crept on Gina's face as she watched the Presidential address devolve into a barely contained riot. No, all was not lost after all.

* * *

><p><strong>Author's note: <strong>Originally this was going to be two chapters but the suggestion was made to consider condensing them. I decided to try it and see what the result looked like. As for Head Six's translation abilities, I didn't think they were too far of a stretch from what she did in the show. She repeatedly showed herself knowledgeable about things Baltar and other Colonials had no way to know about (I think the first instance of that was the transponder hidden in _Galactica's_ CIC, correct me if I am wrong) in addition to showing Baltar things like what the Kobol Opera House looked like in it's heyday. Besides, she was not adverse to putting Baltar between a rock and hard place in the show so I don't intend to use her as a Deus ex Machina either. Anyway, I am going to try to put at least one chapter out per week, two if I can manage it.


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter Four: Tin Can Jesters**

**Battlestar **_**Galactica**_

**June 13, 2510**

"Well, there ain't no mission like a suicide mission," Lieutenant Margaret "Racetrack" Edmondson said as she stood beside her Raptor, watching as Tyrol's men were busy tearing apart and putting her baby back together again.

"It's not a suicide mission," Kara Thrace said.

"Let's see, we are going to jump into a system held by a Thirteenth war fleet that our Raptors already pissed off. We are supposed to try and glean whatever information we can about said fleet and the world they are operating around while praying to the Lords they don't notice us. We have no way to communicate if they _do_ notice us and decide to ask us what the hell we are doing in their backyard. And, oh just for fun, we are not bringing any weapons with us in case they decide to get nasty. That certainly sounds like a suicide mission, what do you think Skulls?" Edmondson asked.

"What I was thinking is what the frak did we do to piss the Captain off?" Countermeasures Officer Hamish McCall said.

"Look, we can't risk another shooting incident with the Thirteenth Fleet," Thrace said. "At the same time, the Old Man is right. We have no idea how big that fleet Shark stumbled on really is, we don't know the performance characteristics of any of its ships, and we don't know what their support infrastructure in that system is like; what the civilian infrastructure is; and we sure as hell don't know what those space beasts were. For all we know, they could be genetically engineered by Thirteenth to act as war dogs. We need more information."

"Easy for you to say Starbuck. You aren't the one going to be sticking your head into the lion's mouth; knowing that you are either going to become target practice for the Thirteenth or the rest of our fleet is going to rip us to shreds the moment we get back, _if_ we get back, because we frakked up," Edmondson said.

"You are not going to be target practice," Thrace said. "Tyrol's pulling every trick in the book to decrease your emission signatures and he is bolting on plates of the same carbon composite materials we used on the _Laura_. Don't ask what he had to do to get them but they work wonders at absorbing Dradis emissions; remember I got close enough to take hull shots of the Resurrection Ship without being detected"

"Does Thirteenth even use Dradis?" McCall asked. "We already know they got weaponized lasers and possibly other directed energy weapons. What if they got something that makes Dradis look like the Mark I Eyeball in comparison?"

"If that happens you either jump out immediately or you power down and surrender," Thrace said.

"Like we will have much of a choice," Edmondson said. As if to underscore her words, the deck crew fished unbolting the port-side missile pod. "And since we can't exactly talk to them, how exactly do we tell them '_We Surrender!' _before they blow us out of the stars?"

"That's why I said you power down. They should notice that and, Artemis willing, they will react accordingly," Thrace said. "They are probably just as much in the dark as we are and whoever in charge over there will probably want prisoners for interrogation. But hopefully it will not come to that and you'll be able to jump before they intercept you."

"Unless we jump in-system directly on top of one of their pickets or right in front of their CAP," McCall said. "Then that's all she wrote, sir; and I really don't relish the idea of being in Caprica-Valerii's position or meeting their equivalent of Thorne."

Thrace took a deep breath and slowly let it out. "Look, I don't like this either. But," she looked over her shoulder across the flight deck where Adama stood talking with Tigh. "We. Need. More. Information. And Baltar's getting nowhere fast with his translation program."

* * *

><p>"You're sure this is a good idea, Bill?" Tigh said. "There is good chance Edmondson and McCall won't be coming back."<p>

"I don't have a whole lot of options, Saul," Adama replied. He shrugged. "I could always do what Lee suggested instead. Taking the _Pegasus, _stripping her of all but the most essential personnel and going out to meet this Thirteenth fleet Finnegan ran into and see if we can make peaceful contact."

"Yes, because nothing says we in come peace like a battlestar," Tigh said.

"But we can't talk to them," Adama continued. "And the last time I checked on Baltar he was beating his fists on his keyboard while having a spirited conversation with himself; so I don't want to risk one of the battlestars just yet. How is the fleet reacting to Laura's address?"

"Well, Zarek is telling anybody who will listen that Roslin has no right to suspend the elections and is tossing the words 'fascist dictatorship' around," Tigh said. "He is also meeting with Baltar along with the Quorum Representatives from Tauron and Picon. There was a small riot in the Starlight Lounge, two people killed and twenty-one injured. And the captains of the _Adriatic_ and the _Astral Queen _are both threatening to jump towards one of the Thirteenth colony worlds on their own initiative. The _Adriatic _is even threatening to shoot at us if we try and stop her."

"Wonderful," Adama said. "Well, Laura is scouring the fleet for every children's book about learning to read and write, you know _A is for Apple _that kind of stuff, that she can find." A dry chuckle escaped his lips. "That's Plan B if Baltar can't deliver."

* * *

><p><strong>Cylon Basestar<strong>

**One hundred and eighty light years away from Miller's Landing**

**Early Morning June 14, 2510**

"One more jump to go," Baltar said as he sat on the edge of the data-font; smug little smile on his face. "Are you nervous, my dear?"

Caprica Six tried her best to ignore him; the last thing she needed was Cavil to notice her seemingly talking to herself. The bastard's ego had kicked into overdrive since yesterday when word had reached the Colony of the nuclear explosions that had ripped through the Colonial Fleet.

"Well, you are not the only one that is little on edge," Baltar said as he slid off the edge of the data-font and walked up beside her, hands clasped behind his back. "You see that Four over there? The one standing just behind Cavil and the One who commands this basestar? He looks nervous, doesn't he?"

Baltar leaned in close and whispered in her ear. "The poor guy spent the better part of the last two days tearing apart the Heavy Raider that detected the nuclear blasts; only to find there was nothing wrong with its sensors and that has him worried. Of course, the Ones don't want to hear that. Cavil says it was six light-minutes away when it picked up the detonations and the distance distorted the readings. The One who commands this basestar still thinks something is wrong with the Raider's sensors and the Four isn't doing his job properly. He is already thinking about having him boxed for incompetence."

_I'm not surprised, _Caprica Six thought. Ones tended to be vindictive bastards, masking their hatred behind a thin facade of reason and rationality. They still wanted to see humanity wiped out or at least reduced to a reasonable number; less than a thousand was what Cavil had deemed reasonable. _What was the point of all this now? The Twelve Colonies are destroyed; their war fleet reduced to merely two battlestars and only fifty-thousand or so humans remained in total. It would take decades, no more like centuries, before they could ever really pose a threat to us again; assuming they have even found a suitable world to colonize._

"The point is Cavil and the rest of the Ones will never be satisfied," Baltar said, reading her mind. "And they will always need somebody, something, to blame for that lack satisfaction. Human or Cylon, it makes no difference as Daniel found out; the reason the universe is never how they want it to be is always going to be someone else's fault, never their own. Eventually, they will even turn on it each other; witness how Cavil had the One who was brought to the Colonial Fleet from Caprica with the Resistance fighters, the one who announced the cease-fire, boxed after Adama and Roslin spaced them."

"What are you thinking about?" Boomer asked as she walked up beside her.

"The future," Capirca Six said as she glared at the back of Cavil's head. "God's plan for his children. But mainly how much I despise the Ones and how I am going to reign in their genocidal impulses when we force the surrender of the Colonial survivors."

* * *

><p>"That woman needs some serious reprogramming," the One Commander glanced over in Caprica Six's direction.<p>

"You'll get no argument from me there, brother," Cavil said. "If left to my own devices I would probably have her boxed but she is something of a folk hero among the other models and I don't need the headaches that course of action would bring."

"Yes, a pity the other models are not as enlightened as us," One Commander said. He leaned forward and whispered so the Four couldn't hear. "Even the Fours are starting to slip-up. The failed breeding program on Caprica and now taking the erroneous readings from a malfunctioning Heavy Raider at face value," he shook his head. "And we had such high hopes for them."

"Yes, it is a real pity," Cavil said. "Forty-plus nukes in the five megaton range detonated six minutes prior? The infiltrators killed on the Colonial Fleet and resurrected say that Adama has less than ten warheads total. Radiation spikes indicating multiple detonations from missiles carrying a _three-hundred-and-twenty megaton_ _warhead_ a day earlier? _We_ don't have warheads of that caliber. The Raider is obviously malfunctioning but the Four believes otherwise."

He shook his head in disgust. "How soon till the others arrive?"

"Soon, brother."

Cavil snarled. He wanted an overwhelming display of force to convince the survivors that their only hope of survival was to surrender. Unfortunately, the Cylon fleet had been spread out all over the galaxy hunting the Colonials and only eight basestars, including the one that had made the initial discovery, had been docked at the Colony. Seven more were supposed to rendezvous with them before making the final jump on top of the Colonial Fleet for a combined total of fifteen basestars carrying over five thousand Raiders and Heavy Raiders.

But the longer they waited, the greater the chance the Colonial survivor's would flee. _The eight we have should still be enough, _Cavil thought.

"Relax brother," One Commander said. "We have a Heavy Raider stationed fourteen light-minutes out from the second planet and it's sending a coded burst transmission every thirty minutes. They're still there and if…" he paused as he looked over Cavil's shoulder, a sly grin spreading across his face. "Don't look now, brother, but I think we are about to be enlightened."

Cavil sighed. "So what prophetic mysteries has God deemed fit to grant you today, Leo?"

"The Hybrid's restless," the Number Two known simply as Leo replied, ignoring the sarcasm.

"Well get the Fours to dump some sedatives into its tank. Problem solved," Cavil said.

"You don't understand, it doesn't want to make the final jump," Leo snapped. "It keeps repeating the phrase _Intruders swarm like flame, like the whirlwind, hopes soaring to slaughter all our best against their hulls_. It is foreseeing our destruction if we make the jump."

"I keep forgetting you think that crap has religious significance," Cavil muttered under his breath as he walked to the data-font and stuck his hand into the water.

_FTL system check, diagnostic functions within parameters_ _thirteen demons bearing whips hound the children._ _Counting down, all functions nominal, all functions optimal._ _Don't ask me how I'll be dead in two hundred light years, thank you, thank you. Contact is inevitable, leading to information bleed. Eleventh Raider in forward starboard ventral launch bay reports fuel leak metallic intruders swarm like flame, like the whirlwind; hopes soaring to slaughter all our best against their hulls. End of Line._

"Typical," he muttered as he yanked out his hand. "Send some Fours to deal with the Hybrid."

"But…"

"Leo, let me explain this very gently," Cavil said. "There is only two battlestars in the Colonial fleet, maybe not even that anymore, and their nuclear arsenal just detonated. Alright? There is no way we are going to lose this fight." He threw his hands up into the air. "Delusional machines! What's the universe gonna come up with next?"

* * *

><p><strong>DNS <strong>_**Stalingrad**_

**In orbit above Miller's Landing**

"There it goes again," Al-Ahamer said as he looked at his watch. "Thirty minutes exactly. Maybe we should let this godforsaken bastard run the trains in Augustgrad."

"I still think it is a bad idea to let an unknown ship just sit there, watch us and broadcast whatever we're doing to God knows who," Hoffman said, her elbows propped up on the conference table, hands clasped together as she stared at the holographic image of the unknown ship.

"My boys can take care of this thing easily if starts getting uppity, Captain," Rear Admiral Shige Sugimura, Commanding Officer 20th Destroyer Flotilla, said. "Besides, this thing's sensors appear to be crap. We got a stealthed recon drone within two hundred meters of it and got no reaction whatsoever. We managed to get some real nice pictures of its hull; it's mounting two tri-barrel autocannons of a smaller caliber than what our Vikings carry and some missiles with no radiation signal emitting from them. Not exactly a major threat to anything besides a fighter."

"Sir, no reaction doesn't necessarily mean it didn't detect our drone," Al-Ahamer said. "It could simply be watching that drone to see what it does. Just like we're watching it."

"True," Sugimura said. "But I think we should have gotten some reaction when we parked the _Avarice_ twenty kilometers behind it. No matter how good the destroyer's cloaking system is something always leaks through and as far as distances between spaceships go the _Avarice _and the mystery gunship are practically touching each other."

"Shige's got a point Samuel," Mujawar said at the head of the table. "If its computer systems are anything like the ones salvaged earlier it's lucky to even be able to monitor the battle group from that distance." He looked at Hoffman. "And I don't like it any more than you do Rachel, but that bastard is our only lead we have on these mystery gunships. So we are not going to turn it into scrap if we can help it."

"I'm not suggesting we blow it up, sir," Hoffman said. "If we hit it with an ion cannon or a missile with an EMP warhead we could capture it reasonably intact."

"That has good chance of wiping its computer systems," Al-Ahamer said.

"So what Captain?" Hoffman said. "It's not like we can read the data on it anyway. Efforts to crack those burst transmissions and decrypt that mystery language by the Adjutants haven't amounted to anything."

"We're going to…" Mujawar started before the conference room hatch swung open and a young ensign stepped in, handed Mujawar a computer print-out, saluted and than turned and left without saying a word. A grin slowly spread across Mujawar's face as he read it.

"We just received word from Dylar Sub-Sector Command. After reviewing the situation they are granting our request for reinforcements to hunt down where these mystery ships are coming from. Grand Admiral Kruger has detached the 14th Battle Division, 5th Carrier Division, 31st Battlecruiser Squadron and the 42nd and 45th Destroyer Flotillas from the Dylar IV picket and designated them Battle Group Antietam under Vice Admiral Tattnall. They are to link up with us and together with Battle Group Trondheim they are to form the 17th (Provisional) Fleet, of which I have just been placed in command."

"That's excellent news sir," Vice Admiral Joseph Boucher, CO of the 28th Battlecruiser Squadron, said. "What is their ETA?"

"One hour and forty-five minutes," Mujawar said. "We need to contact Admiral Tattnall immediately because I don't want our little uninvited guest to see them arrive. What we are going to do is have Antietam hold position at one light year outside the Miller System; just in case our mystery asshole decides to bring in some friends."

* * *

><p>Twenty-two minutes later and five hundred thousand and fifty-four kilometers away from DNS <em>Stalingrad<em> a flicker of pseudo-motion announced the arrival of Racetrack's Raptor.

"Switching non-essential systems off, setting sensors to passive," Skulls said. "No active transmissions."

"Ok, I am plotting a course that should take us within thousand klicks of the second planet," Racetrack said. She glanced towards the idol of Artemis sitting on top of the console. Starbuck said it always brought her luck when she had given it to her just before they had left _Galactica_. _Gods, I hope you are right Starbuck because we need all the luck we are going to get._

"Alright, killing main engines," Racetrack said. "Now we just drift along and pray to the gods that they don't notice us."

* * *

><p>"Lidar contact! Bearing two-nine-six, mark two-two-one, range five-hundred-eighty-one kilometers. Designating contact Sierra Two."<p>

Senior Lieutenant Fredrick Lu, tactical officer aboard the _Devastator_-class missile destroyer DNS _Penance, _looked up from the report he was reading concerning ammunition expenditures during the battle with the Feral Zerg. "Any IFF signal?"

"No sir, Sierra Two is not transmitting any identification," the naval rating cybernetically linked to the _Penance's_ tactical computer replied. "No indication Sierra Two has seen us. Cloak is uncompromised. Sir, at present course and speed Sierra Two will pass by the 9th Battle Division and screen at a distance of eight-hundred and forty-eight kilometers twelve hours and six minutes from now."

* * *

><p>"Another one?" Mujawar asked.<p>

"Yes sir," Hoffman said. "Lidar signature of the new target is consistent with the gunships the 1st/413th engaged near the dead Leviathan. Shall I order the _Penance_ to intercept?"

"No," Mujawar said after a moment's thought. "Have the _Penance_ shadow them. Let's see what he does. Besides, Tatnall will be here within next hour."

* * *

><p>"So far so good," Racetrack said. "Maybe that idol Starbuck gave us is lucky after all."<p>

"I hope so," Skulls said.

Unbeknownst to either of them the cloaked shape of the DNS _Penance_ settled into a position one hundred kilometers astern from them. Together the two craft drifted silently through the void.

* * *

><p><strong>Cylon Basestar<strong>

**One hundred and eighty light years away from Miller's Landing**

**Eight hours later**

"We just received a report from the Number Three posing as a reporter on the _Cloud 9. _Roslin made a public address two days ago, saying they had found the Thirteenth Tribe," a Five said.

"And you believe that?" Cavil asked. "The Thirteenth Tribe is a myth, a fantasy, something Adama and Roslin tell the huddled masses to keep them going while they continually stare into the Abyss. Remember, Adama promised those poor, dumb, inbred bastards that he knew exactly where Earth was in the aftermath of our total victory. That was a lie and this is too."

"But Roslin said that their Raptors had a violent encounter with a Thirteenth Fleet. She is suspending elections…"

"Well there you go," One Commander said. "It is a political ploy. Roslin is afraid that Baltar and Zarek are going to take what little power she's got away from her. Lucky for her that a crisis comes along right before the elections and they now have to be postponed indefinitely. How very convenient; I don't suppose anybody besides Roslin and her boyfriend have seen these phantom Thirteen ships?"

"No," the Five said. "But our embedded reporter didn't say anything about nuc…"

"Finally!" Cavil exclaimed as the last basestar jumped into formation with them. He glanced over his shoulder at the Five. "We'll find out the truth soon enough; so quit bellyaching."

"I trust our Hybrid is cooperative now?" he asked turning towards a pair of Number Fours. "No more prophecies of impending doom or any other asinine crap?"

"It will do as it is told," the Four on the right said.

"Excellent! Prepare to jump on top of the Colonial Fleet!"

* * *

><p>"Cavil is right," the Four said as he knelt beside the Hybrid's tank, wiping fluid off of his hands. "You put too much stock in their utterances. It is just gibberish; a side-effect caused by neural overload of being linked to the basestar's systems along with Centurions and Raiders."<p>

Leo just glared at him.

"_Increase atmospheric oxygen by 0.05% dog-faced boys give way to blond harlequin, all is laid bare. Infrastructure check, wetware check, nuclear anti-ship missiles loaded into port dorsal launch tubes. Princess calls out to the Knight, calls out to the Queen, __sunlight emerges from the hammerhead."_

The Four snorted. "Tell me Leo, how can a hammer generate sunlight?"

Before he could reply the Hybrid screamed in ecstasy.

"_Jump."_

* * *

><p><strong>DNS <em>Stalingrad<em>**

_Big wheels keep on turning, Carry me home to see my kin_

"That used to be Jamie's favorite song," Lieutenant Jorgen Vogt said he leaned back in the chair and propped his feet up on the bar table. The small officer's club tucked just aft of the port-side hangar bays was mostly deserted right now, just three other patrons besides them.

"Yeah," Lieutenant Commander Richard Farkas said as he took a sip of whiskey. "You got the bastard that killed him though. Small consolation though." He hissed. "I just finished writing the _We Regret To Inform You _letter to his wife. He has…had two sons and a daughter; I grew up without a father following the Battle of Turaxis II. I know what that's like." He took another sip and slammed the glass down on the table. "Has Cheshire got anything stronger than this shit?"

Vogt shrugged. "Don't know. You're lucky the Admiral even lets us have alcohol on the ship."

"Yeah." Farkas stood up and turned towards the bar. _Nothing, crap._ He shook his head. His ancestors had undergone genetic modification, which was one of the reasons they had ended up in a UPL concentration camp before being shoved into a cryo-tube aboard the _Argo_, and one of the side-effects of that modification is that it took a lot of alcohol for him to even get a half-way decent buzz. _And right now I really don't want to be sober._

He had gotten half-way to the bar when the atonal howl of General Quarters alarm resounded through out the _Stalingrad's _corridors.

* * *

><p>"Report!" Mujawar yelled as he ran into Combat Information Center, minus his boots and uniform jacket. He had been right in the middle of evening prayers when the alarm had sounded.<p>

"Fifteen unknown contacts, cruiser size, just jumped in system. Range fifteen hundred kilometers, bearing one-nine-nine, mark two-seven," Commander Ramius reported. "Bogies are launching fighters…Jesus Christ, estimate four thousand plus fighters; they're not cruisers, they're carriers."

The hatch slid open and Hoffman came running in, hands busy buckling her belt.

"Damn bastards. I was in the refresher," she hissed. "So it looks like our two mystery assholes finally brought in their friends."

"Launch our fighter squadrons and have the battle group break orbit," Mujawar ordered. "And get Tattnall on the horn."

* * *

><p><strong>Cylon Basestar<strong>

"Something's wrong," the Four said as he withdrew his hand from the data-font. "Dradis returns from the Colonials don't match previous ones taken from the refugee fleet."

"What? How do they not frakking match?" Cavil demanded.

"Their hull profiles don't match the hull profiles of Adama's ships," Four said. "In fact, they don't match _any_ hull profiles in our databanks. There are also at least twenty more ships than Adama is supposed to have in his fleet. The energy readings don't match any known Colonial drives or power plant signatures. That's not Adama's fleet!"

"_What!?"_

"When is the last time you saw a One's jaw drop?" Caprica Six asked.

"Never," Boomer whispered, her eyes going wide.

"Just sit back and watch," Baltar said. "The fun's just beginning."

"If it's not Adama's Fleet, it has to be another Colonial refugee fleet," One Commander said even as rather a nasty suspicion reared its ugly head in the back of his mind. He shook his head violently. _No, it is not possible._

"It is just another refugee fleet," he repeated, more to reassure himself than anything else. "One we missed when we swept through Cyrannus looking for surviving Colonial ships."

"Didn't you just frakking hear him?" Caprica Six demanded. "These ships don't match any known Colonial vessels!"

"The Thirteenth Tribe," Boomer whispered softly. Both the Ones turned and glared at her. "I'm just saying what we are all thinking."

"Let's not jump to conclusions," Cavil hissed. "There could be oth…."

"New Dradis Contacts!" a Five screamed.

* * *

><p><strong>Racetrack's Raptor<strong>

"Sweet, merciful Hera," Racetrack whispered as she stared at the enhanced telescopic imagery being displayed on the screen in front of her. They were still over twenty-thousand kilometers away from the original Thirteenth Fleet when the Cylon basestars jumped in; followed a few minutes later by a second Thirteenth fleet.

"Looks like the Toasters and the Thirteenth are about to go after each other's throats," Skulls said.

"Yeah, I am almost tempted to sit here and watch. But since Shark's flight already shot at them and they are probably gunning for us right now, I don't want to be anywhere near them when they start shooting," Racetrack said. "So that's our cue to get the frak out of here Skulls."

Skulls nodded. "Switching on main engines and spooling up the FTL. Switching on the Dradis too."

* * *

><p>"Energy spike from Sierra Two," Lu reported. "Looks like their engines are coming on line."<p>

"You know our standing orders, Lieutenant," Commander Monica Hickson, captain of the DNS _Penance_, said. "Drop cloak and fire."

* * *

><p>"WHAT TH…." Skulls yelled. "Dradis Contact! One hundred kilometers dead astern!"<p>

All color drained from Racetrack's face.

"Toaster or Thirteenth?" She demanded as she pulled back hard on the stick while pushing the throttle all the way forward, putting the Raptor into a hard left turn, climbing as she went.

"Thirteenth," Skulls said after a moment. Then he looked her dead in the eye. "And they just fired two missiles at us."

The two AS-4 Night Hunter missiles barreled after them. Designed specifically to cripple other Terran ships' electronic warfare capabilities; the Night Hunter's warhead consisted largely of concentrated vespene gas. Right before detonation, hydrogen sulfide mixed with the vespene before being bombarded with a small neutron accelerator. The result, when detonated, produced an incredibly powerful electro-magnetic pulse; roughly equivalent to the one generated by a two-hundred megaton nuclear warhead. Testing on the salvaged Raptors had confirmed this would be more than enough to overwhelm their onboard computers; shutting the craft down and allowing it to be captured intact.

"How long till the FTL is ready?" Racetrack asked as she banked to right, diving at a forty-five degree angle. She flipped a switch on her console and chaff exploded out from underneath her Raptor.

"One minute, twelve seconds!"

_So it's a race, _she thought, watching the display as the missiles closed, both of them ignoring the chaff. _Lucky idol my ass! _She pulled back on the stick and sent the Raptor rocketing upwards at an eighty-three degree angle; engines shrieking as she pushed them to the breaking point; the inertial compensator struggling to keep up with the g-forces.

"Forty-five seconds!"

"Here goes nothing," Racetrack said as she throttled the port engine back, causing the Raptor to pivot. She increased power to the starboard engine sending the Raptor spinning into a cartwheel. She triggered the chaff again, keeping the Raptor in the cartwheel for two more seconds before pulling out. She then dove, turning into a loop as she went, passing about twenty kilometers underneath the missiles before leveling out and accelerating as fast as she could in the opposite direction.

"Thirty-seconds!"

One missile went for the chaff this time and Racetrack screamed in joy. But the other one managed to reacquire her and swung around.

"Thirteenth warship just fired another two missiles!" Skulls said. "Twenty-five seconds!"

"We'll make it!" Racetrack yelled. She threw the Raptor into corkscrew, triggering her remaining chaff as she went. She then pulled the Raptor up till it was almost on its back before suddenly reversing the loop, snapping back into her original heading and than diving.

"Fifteen seconds!"

The second missile overshot her.

"Two down, two to go!" Racetrack screamed. "I can do this!" She swung to the left, cutting power to port engine while throttling up the starboard engine.

"Five seconds!"

The remaining two Night Hunters closed within five kilometers and detonated; and Racetrack's console, the engines, everything with an electronic circuit aboard the Raptor died.

"Oh frak me," Racetrack whispered.

* * *

><p><strong>DNS <strong>_**Stalingrad**_

"That got their attention," Mujawar said as the massive enemy fighter cloud split into two different formations, one maintaining position between Battle Group Trondheim and the carriers, other moving into do the same for Battle Group Antietam. "If it wasn't for those bodies we recovered earlier I would think these bastards are aliens from the way those ships look. Have we confirmed that there is no visible propulsion system on the enemy carriers?"

"Yes, sir," Ramius reported. "Recon drones report no visible thrusters. Fighters are a different story."

"Wonderful," Mujawar said. "Somebody mind telling me how these jokers operating computer systems at least four hundred years obsolete manage to have reactionless drives, a technology that we haven't mastered?"

The rest of the CIC was silent.

"No idea sir," Al-Ahamer said at last. "But judging from the fact their fighters and gunships have more conventional propulsion systems I think we can assume that their reactionless drives are either mass intensive or a major energy hog; which is why they are only mounted on the carriers. If we manage to knock one of those carriers out and salvage it or, even better, capture one intact just think of what it could do for our R&D program."

"And you were calling me trigger-happy earlier," Hoffman muttered.

"Different situation. Those carriers' biggest offensive weapons are their fighters and gunships," Al-Ahamer countered. "We have already engaged, shot down and salvaged two examples of those craft. We know what their weapon systems, armor and power plants are like; they are qualitatively inferior to our Viking and Wendigo fighters. Even one of the old Wraiths could have engaged two of these things at once with a reasonable chance of victory. Besides they have already shot at us and jumping a small carrier fleet and a shit-load of fighters and gunships next to us does not exactly speak of peaceful intentions. We would be well within our right to attack and we have them outnumbered in capital ships eight-to-one."

"Settle down, both of you," Mujawar snapped. "I don't care what mystery language, code, whatever, those bastards use amongst themselves; somebody on those ships has to understand English. Hail them, all open frequencies."

"Done," Commander John Samson, the _Stalingrad's _executive officer, said.

"Attention unidentified Terran vessels, this is Fleet Admiral Mujawar of the Terran Dominion Navy. You are trespassing on sovereign Dominion territory and have openly attacked Dominion ships. Power down your weapons and recall your fighters. Failure to do so in the next ten minutes will be met with lethal force. Mujawar out."

* * *

><p><strong>Cylon Basestar<strong>

"Somehow, I doubt we missed this many ships when we hunted down the survivors of the initial attack," Caprica Six said, a sadistic smile on her face as she watched Cavil turn a very pale shade of gray.

"We just tried to hack their systems," a Four said. "We don't recognize the programming language, the framework, the…" he stammered for a few seconds before he finally managed to get the words out. "It's not a Colonial system!"

"They're hailing us," a Two said. Caprica Six flinched at the harsh alien words coming from the speakers. Whoever was speaking didn't sound like he was scared, nervous, unsure or hesitant; the kind of emotions she expected someone to have when confronted by an unknown threat. Instead, whoever was speaking sounded _pissed._

"I don't recognize the language," a Four said. "Like we needed more confirmation that we are dealing with the Thirteenth Tribe."

"How should we respond?" One Commander asked.

"By opening fire," Cavil said. Everybody turned and looked at him.

"Don't look at me like that," Cavil snarled. "We need to know what these ships are capable of; we need to know what their weapons are capable of and if we can salvage some of their tech or even capture a few prisoners for interrogation the more the better."

"They have us outnumbered in capital ships by eight-to-one and have got us boxed in-between two of their fleets," a Five said. "That is not exactly good odds or a good position to be in."

"And we have them outnumbered in fighter craft by four-to-one," Cavil snapped. "And so what if we die? We made sure there was a Resurrection Ship in range before coming here."

"Even if we do somehow manage to win," Boomer said. "We're going to take heavy loses."

"And this is the Thirteenth Tribe we are dealing with here," Caprica Six said. "We're not at war with them; we have _never _been at war with them! We have no idea how big their population base is or how many worlds they control or how big their military is."

"Our Six comrade is right," a Four said. "Scans show the world below is sparsely populated with only two major settlements, one of which looks like a military base. There is no orbital industry or infrastructure, like the Scorpion Fleet Shipyards, that would be necessary to build and maintain fleets of this size. I…I am forced to conclude that this is a frontier world and we are dealing with two frontier picket fleets. Based on this assessment there is a high probability the Thirteenth Tribe is able to rival or exceed the pre-Fall Twelve Colonies in terms of resources, industrial capability and population base."

"But you don't know that for sure?" Cavil demanded.

"No," the Four said after a moment's hesitation. "It's just an educated guess based on what I seen so far; but we're very much in the dark here."

"That's my point," Cavil said, spit flying from his mouth. "If we attack we will gain badly needed information about this new threat and anything we lose can be replaced easily! The Resurrection Ship is in range. They have no idea where the Colony is, where our shipyards are, because the information gap cuts both ways! So strategically we are safe. So we have nothing to lose and much to gain so open fire!"

"And what happens if they kick our asses?" Caprica Six said. "Which is a very distinct possibility. They might be the ones salvaging our tech and interrogating us as prisoners."

"Suicide," Cavil replied. "If you are taken prisoner you only have yourself to blame."

"Oh you sorry little….You don't kick a Caprican Wolf in the ass to see how the rest of the pack is going to react, Cavil!" Caprica Six shot back.

"I don't have time to deal with this," Cavil said flatly as he drew a Delphi Arms .45 magnum revolver from his shoulder holster. He flipped the safety off, grasped the pistol grip firmly in both hands, took aim and fired. The heavy bullet hit Caprica Six right below her left eye, taking off most of the left side of her head. Boomer flinched as Six's blood and brain matter splashed across her face.

"Get that garbage out of here," Cavil ordered to the nearby Centurions. He flipped the safety back on before twirling the pistol around his trigger finger. "I trust there are no more objections?"

Everybody was silent.

"Good," Cavil said as re-holstered the pistol. "See this is what distinguishes us as a breed apart from humans; the ability to put aside our differences, no matter how severe, and to come together when it really counts. Acting as one heart, one mind, one soul. Now I believe I said something about opening fire?"

* * *

><p><strong>Author's note: <strong>_Wings of Liberty's _soundtrack includes a cover of Lynrd Skynyrd's _Sweet Home Alabama _(great song, great band, no copy-right infringement intended, this is just for fun) by Big Tuna playing on the Jukebox on the_ Hyperion. _That is the song playing in the background when Farkas and Vogt are sharing a drink in remembrance of the pilots Finnegan's patrol killed.

I have tried to keep Cavil's character in line with his behavior on the series; switching from sarcastic charm to ruthless brutality and sadism at the drop of a hat. Remember, we are dealing with a character who killed his brother and nuked twenty billion people simply to take away other things that might divert Mommy and Daddy's attention away from him. Cavil is a spoiled, egotistical child masquerading as a sophisticated, rational adult but the moment things don't go his way he breaks things. And he is one character who is always guaranteed to pour fuel onto the proverbial fire; which makes him a good plot device to start a fight.

Oh, and like in the series, the Hybrid's utterances point towards events in the future. Bet you'll never guess who the Queen is (sarcasm intended).


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter Five: Toasters and the Meat Grinder**

**Racetrack's Raptor**

**Miller System**

**Late Afternoon June 14, 2510**

"Its shot," Skulls said as he crawled out from underneath the navigation console, screwdriver and a pair of pliers in hand. "As powerful as that pulse was…hell, even the flashlights don't work."

"Well it is fortunate that we don't have to worry about lighting then, isn't it?" Racetrack asked. The Thirteenth warship was parked less than fifty meters away, keeping its twin powerful searchlights locked on the cockpit. It was hard to see over the damn lights but she estimated the craft was somewhere in the vicinity of two hundred meters long, with a beam of near twenty meters and a height of around fifteen meters. Nowhere near the size of the _Galactica _but huge compared to their Raptor.

Skulls slumped back into his chair. "Face it Racetrack, we're stuck here."

"Wish we had brought along some swallows instead of plain old chaff," Racetrack said. "We might not be stuck here if we had but it was 'too much of an emission signature.' Damn you Tyrol."

* * *

><p>"New orders from<em> Stalingrad," <em>the ensign manning the communications console said. "We are to hold position and keep an eye on the disabled gunship. They're going to send a ship to pick them up as soon as the enemy fighters and carriers are no longer an issue."

"Think they got enough air to last that long, Captain?" Lieutenant Commander Caesar Kunikov, the _Penance's _executive officer, asked as he stared out the bridge viewports at the enemy gunship's crew.

"That's their problem," Hickson replied. "Besides, we already know that our docking collar is not compatible with that gunship. So we can't exactly help them in that regard, now can we?"

* * *

><p><strong>DNS <strong>_**Stalingrad**_

"Make a hole!" Farkas yelled as he put his flight helmet on, running through the deck crew and nearly knocking over a weapons technician in the process. There was a soft hiss as the helmet hermetically sealed with the rest of his flight armor. Soft pin-pricks ran up and down his spine as the neural translators sunk into his flesh and the heads-up display flickered on.

_Start you son of a bitch, _he thought. The Viking's remote start system linked to the MMI (mind-machine interface) chip in his flight armor received the command and the deck hands cleared out as the fighter's engines roared to life. He crossed the three hundred feet of flight deck remaining in less than twenty seconds, backwash from another Viking taking off threatening to knock him down as he ran. He made a running jump onto the ladder, climbing up past the snarling, red-eyed black dog's head painted on the fighter's bow along with the blood-red letters 1st/413th.

"Too slow, sir" Vogt said over the comm as his Viking took off just as Farkas settled into the cockpit. _We'll see about that. _VTOL engines whined as the Viking lifted off its legs, transforming from assault mode to fighter mode; his lips pulled back in a feral grin as felt the power of the fighter's engines vibrate through him, howling like a demon hungry for blood.

"Time to fly the unfriendly skies," he said as his Viking roared out of the hangar bay.

* * *

><p>"Whoever is in command over there doesn't seem to be an extraordinarily quick thinker," Mujawar said as he watched the timer count down, hitting the seven minute and thirty-second mark.<p>

"I still think we should try capturing one of the carriers, sir," Al-Ahamer said.

"We have been over this already, Samuel," Mujawar said. "As Kurt pointed out we don't know the internal layout of those carriers; which makes crippling them so they can't escape while not completely destroying their reactionless drives difficult at best_._ Nor are we going to be able to send Marines to board them until we have dealt with that massive fighter cloud and the enemy point defenses, which we don't know the strength and layout of either. It is far easier to just blast them and comb through the debris field for anything useful. End of discussion."

The timer reached the eight-minute mark.

"How are we doing, Rachel?" Mujawar asked.

"Defensive matrix is operational," Hoffman said. "Hell Hammers are loaded with cluster rounds and…"

"Missile launch," Ramius said. "Count fifty missiles inbound from carrier eight…carriers six and seven just launched too. Confirm one hundred-fifty missiles inbound, no radiation signature, appear to be conventional warheads. Enemy fighters attacking."

* * *

><p><strong>Cylon Basestar<strong>

"Are you sure that is the enemy flagship?" Cavil demanded as the Raiders broke formation to allow the missile salvo to pass through.

"It's the ship that tried to hail us earlier," Boomer said, wiping the last bit of Caprica Six's blood off of her face. Point defense turrets on the Thirteenth ships opened up, filling the space between the two fleets with energy while counter-missiles flew out of their launch tubes.

"Laser weapons," the Four standing beside Boomer whispered as he watched explosions ripple across space as missile after missile died.

"I thought we tried to create those ourselves and failed," Boomer said. "I thought you and your brothers said it wasn't worth the time and effort."

"Apparently we were mistaken, because the Thirteenth Tribe obviously figured out a way to make them a reality," the Four said. Despite the heavy defensive fire twenty missiles still managed to break through and angled for the enemy flagship's underbelly…only to detonate fifty meters short of the enemy ship's hull.

"What the frak!?" Boomer, Cavil and the Four yelled in unison. They glanced at each other before turning back towards the display.

"Did you see that? For a brief instance I thought I saw a…." she struggled to come up with the words. "a green energy…field…thing in front…"

"Not frakking possible!" the Four yelled, his eyes threatening to pop out of their sockets.

* * *

><p><strong>Black Dog Lead<strong>

"You'll have to do better than that," Farkas said as he watched the last of the enemy missile salvo expended itself uselessly against the _Stalingrad's_ defensive matrix fields. Hell Hammer rail-gun batteries onboard the _Stalingrad _and her sister ship _Shiloh _fired, sending salvos of eight hundred millimeter cluster rounds into the incoming fighter swarm at near the speed of light. Built under contract for the Dominion Navy by Enlightened Dynamics and operating under the same principles as the AF-9 Ripwave missiles that Farkas' Viking carried, the shells ruptured, spewing out hundreds of bowling ball sized pellets, each one containing just a tiny amount of anti-matter; in essence turning the Hell Hammers into giant anti-matter shotguns. Explosions and sub-atomic shrapnel tore through the incoming fighters. But there was just so damn many of them that nearly a hundred broke through the maelstrom and bared down on Farkas' squadron.

"Here we go boys, light'em up," Farkas said, a cold smile on his face he locked on to the lead incoming enemy fighter. _We don't have to rely on the autocannons this time. _The first engagement he had with these mystery assholes in the shadow of the dead Leviathan had occurred after an hours long slugging match with the Feral Zerg and his squadron had already expended most of its missiles when the unidentified gunships had fired on them. This time things were different.

He pulled the trigger and four Ripwaves shot out from his missile pods. They shrieked towards the incoming enemy fighter just as two missiles fired out from under its twin scimitar shaped wings. Farkas pulled back on the stick, banking right, dropping two decoy drones in the process and giving the Guardian point defense system as clear shot as he could. One missile exploded as the beam hit and the other went for the decoy. At the same time his missiles detonated right in front of the enemy fighter, sub-atomic shrapnel tearing off one of its wings and gutting it's weirdly shaped cockpit.

The presence of point defense systems on the enemy fighters caught the Cylon Raiders off-guard but they had been programmed to quickly adapt to developing combat situations. It took them one nano-second to analyze the Viking's point defense's performance and concluded that in could be overwhelmed by shear weight of fire and that the closer they fired their missiles to their target the less time it had to track, lock on and destroy them. Three Raiders and a Heavy immediately focused all their attention on Farkas and Vogt's Vikings, closing to forty kilometers before firing in unison.

"Fast learners, aren't they?" Vogt said over the comm. _Yeah, _Farkas thought as twelve missiles came straight at them. Both he and his wingman triggered their chaff and decoys, their Guardian lasers stabbing out as they banked left and dove. They managed to knock out four of the missiles, three went for the decoys; but two still went for Farkas and the other three went for Vogt. One missile missed Farkas' Viking at the last second but the other stuck his port wing.

"Shit," Farkas hissed as the explosion shook his Viking, warning lights flashing as one of the port maneuvering thrusters ceased to function. Out of the corner of his eye could see explosions in the vicinity of Vogt's Viking. Then the enemy fighters were on him, guns blazing as their rounds slammed into his Viking. The armor held though and Farkas pivoted the Viking, firing a burst into the enemy fighter as it shot past.

* * *

><p><strong>DNS <strong>_**Turaxis**_

"Well, I think that's our cue to start the party," Benjamin Tattnall said, his teeth clenched around his corn-cob pipe, as he watched the enemy missiles slam into the _Stalingrad's _defensive matrix. "Let's see how well one of these star carriers stands up to a Yamato. You have a firing solution locked, Mr. Brown?"

"Yes, sir," his tactical officer replied.

"Good, then fire," Tattnall said.

A massive blood red particle beam shot out of the _Turaxis' _bow, plowing through the enemy fighters and striking the enemy carrier dead center where the two Y-shaped sections met. The resulting explosion blew the ship in half, the two Y sections flying in opposite directions, secondary explosions erupting up and down the spokes.

* * *

><p><strong>Cylon Basestar <strong>

"What the was that?" Cavil asked, his voice barely a whisper.

"Particle beam weapon of some kind," the Four said, shaking his head silently. He doubted anything else would shock anymore after today. "Can you imagine what it would take to power such a weapon? God, I would kill to get my hands on Thirteenth reactor right now. You know, the Colonials tried to create particle beam weapons during the First War but they could never generate the intense magnetic field necessary to focus the shot into cohesive beam of energy and maintain it over long distance. We took a look at their resea…"

His voice trailed off as another of the Thirteenth hammerhead ships fired it's particle beam cannon, obliterating eleven unlucky Raiders caught in it's way before hitting one of the rear top spokes of the basestar next to them, punching right through _that_ and hitting the other spoke, blowing it off. Then another fired and _another. _Cavil's eyes widened as he watched in horror as two more basestars blew apart. In all the battles they had with _Galactica _and_ Pegasus _he never seen anything close to this almost _casual_ blotting away.

"I think we have gotten the information you wanted Cavil," Boomer said. "We are outnumbered and _very frakking heavily outgunned!_ I suggest we pull out immediately!"

"No! Not until we have killed at least one Thirteenth ship!" Cavil screamed. "Fire the nukes! Target the smallest of those hammerhead ships and hit it with everything you got!"

"Might I suggest ordering some of the Raiders to screen the salvo?" the Four said. "That would ensure a larger number of missiles will make it through the counter-battery fire and the chances of killing that Thirteenth ship would be improved by a considerable margin."

"I don't care!" Cavil snapped. "Just kill it!"

* * *

><p><strong>DNS <strong>_**Stalingrad**_

"What are these things made out of?" Mujawar asked. "Tissue paper? I think even the old Confederate _Leviathans _could have done better than this if placed in the same situation."

As if to underscore his point a lone missile streaked through the counter-battery fire, passed through the space formally occupied by the defensive matrix (Hoffman had shut it down and diverted power to the Yamato) and struck the _Stalingrad's_ bow. The explosion dented the outer layer of biosteel armor and nothing else. The regenerative armor, developed by Egon Stetmann from studying Zerg biotech back when he was still with Raynor's Raiders, would erase any trace of the damage within the hour.

"Our strike-craft are still taking heavy losses against their fighters," Ramius reported. "Mainly because there are so damn many of them; we still got over twenty-one hundred of the bastards out there despite the heavy weight of fire we are throwing out and the superiority of our fighters."

"But our ships are a different story, aren't they?" Mujawar asked.

"Yes, so far only two cruisers report minor…Missile launch, estimate one hundred plus," Ramius said. He looked up from the tactical display, his face grim. "Radiation spikes detected. They're nukes and they are targeting the _Huey Long."_

* * *

><p><em><strong>Black Dog Lead<strong>_

_Not good, not good, _Farkas thought as more warning lights flashed singling that he had lost his starboard missile pod. The controls were sluggish as he tried to bank to the right, an enemy fighter scrapping the edge of his wing as it narrowly missed colliding with him head on. _Kamikaze attacks; g__reat, suicidal fanatics. Just what Korpulu needs more of._ He looked up just in time to see another enemy fighter coming at him full-bore. _I can evade him! I can evade...Shit! The controls are no longer responding; I'm not going to evade him! _

But at then all of a sudden the enemy fighter swung away, heading at high-speed towards the missile salvo just launched from the enemy carriers, along with two hundred of his comrades.

* * *

><p>The DNS <em>Huey Long <em>was an old ship, one of the first _Behemoth-_class battlecruisers and built in the final years of the Confederacy. She had served both the Confederate Navy and the Dominion Navy well over the years but age and advances in weapons technology and ship design were slowly leaving her behind. In fact, she was no longer classified as a battlecruiser; the Dominion Navy had redesignated the old _Behemoths _as heavy cruisers following their last major refit three years earlier. But the class still lived on, an upgraded and modified version of the _Behemoths _(referred to as the D-series) were still in production in Dominion shipyards. Now a hundred and ten Cylon nuclear missiles streaked towards her along with two hundred Raiders and Heavy Raiders.

"Confirmed nukes inbound," Lieutenant Commander Mason, the _Huey Long's _tactical officer reported. "Shall I divert power from the Yamato and raise the defensive matrix, Captain?"

Captain Reid snorted. "Against that antiquated pile of crap? You have got to be joking. You see how slow they move? They're even more primitive than their computers. I doubt even one of them will make it through the counter-missiles and point defenses. Continue with your current orders."

"Sir, I respectfully request..."

"I _said_ 'Continue with your current orders, Nick," Reid said. "I don't like having to repeat myself."

"Yes, sir," Mason muttered as he refocused his attention on the plot. Captain Reid had always been a tad on the aggressive side and in a way that was good, the Dominion didn't exactly want timid wallflowers in charge of its cruisers; but that was only good to a certain degree. Too much aggression and, well... Mason shook his head silently as he worked his fingers over the touch-screen controls, assigning the next salvo counter-salve its targets. Twelve counter-missiles launched from their tubes heading towards the incoming nukes. Mason watched them as they went, his eyes widening as the plot changed, showing twelve enemy fighters interposing themselves between the _Long's _counter-missiles and the incoming enemy nukes. _Oh fuck..._

"Captain!" he yelled. "Enemy fighters are sacrificing themselves to protect the nukes!"

The twelve Raiders died as the missiles struck. Laser point defense batteries opened up, blowing up sixteen missiles in half as many seconds. The Raiders started dodging and weaving in-between the missiles, occasionally launching chaff and decoys as they tried to interfere with the gunners' aim. The light cruiser DNS _Murad _saw what was happening and closed the distance with the _Long, _adding her weight to the counter-battery fire. _It is not going to be enough_! Mason thought. Without asking for permission he immediately switched power from the Yamato to the defensive matrix but it still took time, no matter how small an amount, to bring up. Time the _Long _didn't have.

Four enemy missiles made it through the counter-battery fire and struck the side of the _Long._ The ship's armor allowed it to temporarily survive the nuclear fire and that actually made the situation worse. A cascade failure caused three of the Dominion Navy's newest ship killer missiles-the Enlightened Dynamics ASM-14, each mounting a three hundred megaton warhead-to blind fire out of their tubes and strike the underbelly of the _Murad _a hundred and thirty kilometers away while a fourth cooked off in its tube. Three thousand men aboard the _Huey Long _and seven-hundred-and-eighty aboard the _Murad_ died within seconds of each other.

* * *

><p><strong>Cylon Basestar<strong>

"Yes!" Cavil screamed, the other models joining in the cheering as the hammerhead ship blew apart, getting louder as another Thirteen ship blew apart and two others were damaged as debris was hurled out of the expanding fireball. "See?! They are not invincible!"

"Two ships and a little over a hundred fighters destroyed for the cost of eleven basestars and three thousand raiders?" Boomer asked. "Is that a loss ratio we can afford?"

"Oh quit your bitching," Cavil said. "This is a learning experience. It won't be so lop-sided in the…"

All of them were thrown of their feet as heavy long-range shells smashed into the basestar. Leo, the Hybrid and the Four monitoring her died as an eight-hundred millimeter armor-piercing shell punched right through the ship without exploding, obliterating the Hybrid tank and the entire room in the process. Outside the spokes began to crumble as ATA/ATS laser batteries went into rapid fire, systematically taking apart the basestar.

"Get us out of here!" Cavil yelled.

"We can't! The Hybrid's dead!" a Six yelled.

"Well, do so…" Cavil's words were lost as a high-powered plasma blast tore through the command room. Boomer screamed as the air was sucked out along with a Three, two Fours and a Five. She almost went with them but managed to grab onto the shattered bulkhead at the last second. Blood flew into her face as the jagged edge of the metal bit into her flesh. A Centurion reached out to grab her but another explosion sent a steel beam flying, smashing through the Centurion before crushing and severing her fingers. Boomer's scream died as she was sucked out into the void.

"Frak! That was close," Cavil said one hand grasping his neck, the other grasping the Centurion that had pulled him to safety as the hatch closed behind him. Outside the Dominion guns ceased firing as the basestar slowly tumbled away; a shattered, burning hulk that was slowly being pulled in by gravity towards the harsh, cold surface of Miller's Landing.

* * *

><p><strong>DNS <strong>_**Stalingrad**_

"Think anybody on that carrier is going to survive reentry?" Hoffman asked.

"If they do, I am going to pray that the remaining Zerg down there get to them before our troops do," Mujawar hissed. Of the fifteen enemy carriers fourteen had been destroyed. Only one, already heavily damaged by missile fire from the _Anubis,_ had managed to escape; jumping out of system a mere second before it would have been bisected by a Yamato beam. The entire engagement, which has lasted a mere twelve minutes, had cost his fleet the _Huey Long, _one light cruiser, one-hundred-and-seventy-three fighters and four-thousand one-hundred-and-sixty casualties.

* * *

><p><strong>Base Camp, 505<strong>**th ****Mechanized Infantry Brigade**

**Miller's Landing**

"Would you look at that!"

Gunnery Sergeant Tyler Braxton pushed himself out from under the engine compartment of the AAV-7 Crucio siege tank he had named _Gabrielle_, his sleeves and gloves smeared with antifreeze and grease and the old busted radiator hose in his hand. Powerful as the Crucio might be, it was a pain in the ass to work on; only marginally better than the AAV-5 Arclite they had replaced. But at least with the Crucio you could actually get a wrench in the engine compartment without busting your knuckles all to hell so he supposed he should thank God for small favors.

"What so damn important Jennings that I…" his voice trailed off as he saw the fire in the sky. At first he thought it was a comet but as it got closer he could make out the faint outline of a ship, engulfed in fire as pieces broke off and fell to the ground like flaming hail stones as it flew barely ten kilometers overhead. Soldiers scattered as one such piece hit a flatbed truck carrying spare tank treads parked five hundred feet away, pancaking it into the ground and ripping it in half before igniting the truck's fuel tank.

"Son of a bitch!" Braxton yelled, quickly scurrying back underneath _Gabrielle_ as the truck blew. Men screamed as they didn't get to cover fast enough and shrapnel sliced through them. Turning his head he watched through the gap between the boogie wheels as the star-shaped ship struck the nearby mountain some pencil-necked cartographer had named MJ-10, the shattered remains of one of the Y-shaped spokes breaking off and skidding down the slope, engulfing the peak in a cloud of steam as white-hot metal hit the snow and ice, before disappearing behind the mountain range. It was followed a minute later by a loud metallic crash that sounded more like a bomb going off than anything else, a small tremor running through the ground hot on its heels. Slowly Braxton crawled back out from underneath the tank and stood up, staring at the pillar of greasy black smoke starting to rise up above the peaks.

"Braxton! Quit gawking and get your ass over here and help!" Lieutenant Torres yelled. Jennings was down on the ground, screaming bloody murder, a piece of track link embedded in his side, just above his liver.

_Oh that's just frigging great, _he thought as he helped Torres lift Jennings to his feet.

"Steady Jennings," he said as he slung Jennings' right arm over his shoulders. Torres did the same with Jennings' left.

"What the hell is going on sir?" Braxton demanded.

"Navy just blew the crap out of some carrier fleet. Didn't you see the friggin light show up there? " Torres asked.

"No sir! I was probably busy trying to not get a face-full of antifreeze at the time, sir," Braxton snapped back.

"Will you two assholes just quit your damn bickering and get me to the goddamn medics?!" Jennings screamed.

* * *

><p><strong>Wrecked Cylon Basestar<strong>

"He's dead. Leave him," Cavil ordered as a Centurion tugged on the sleeve of a Number Four, a piece of pipe embedded in his forehead. The Four's limbs were still twitching.

"Find anybody else?" he demanded as he turned towards a Number Two who went by the name Travis Collins.

"Another Two, five Threes, two Sixes and an Eight," Collins said as he leaned up against the wall. "And fifteen Centurions."

"So that leaves us with twenty-four human models and sixty-one Cent…Frak, that hurts! Watch what you are doing, you refugee from a scrapyard!" he hissed at the Centurion busy bandaging up the gash on his left arm.

"If it hurts so much you could always eat your gun," Collins said with no trace of sympathy in his voice. "Go get yourself a nice new body on the Resurrection Ship; preferably one with a little bit more brain power and a little less testosterone."

"Don't tempt me," Cavil said. He then glanced down on the deck plates. "Besides, the Resurrection Ship is going to be back-logged for weeks with all the causalities we just took. And during that time one of you loyal, kind, understanding and obedient models might decide to take it upon yourself to have me boxed because you didn't like how our preliminary match with the Thirteenth Tribe turned out."

"The thought had crossed my mind," Collins said as he grabbed the pistol grip of the combat shotgun slung over his shoulder and flipped the safety off. "I am pretty sure other models in other lines are thinking the same thing right about now."

Cavil pulled the revolver out of his shoulder holster while the Centurion stopped bandaging his arm and leveled its machine guns at Collins. "You just go ahead and try you weasel faced bastard."

"Boys, boys, boys," a Number Three said as he pushed herself between Collins and Cavil. "The Thirteenth Tribe is already doing a good enough job at killing us and I am sure they're going to be sending ground troops to check on the crash site soon. Why don't you take your frustrations out on them instead of each other? That way Cavil will get to see what their military's ground forces are like, fulfilling his desire for more information about the Thirteenth, and you will likely get to see Cavil die a violent and bloody death. Everybody goes home happy. Whadda ya say?"

Cavil and Collins glared at each other for a minute before Collins slowly flipped the safety up on his shotgun.

"I can live with that," he said, his lips twisting into a cruel smile. "Besides, if their army is anything like their navy," he started laughing. "Oh God, I can hardly wait to see what kind of new weapon they are going to use on your sorry ass."

"How very pragmatic of you," Cavil said as he holstered the revolver. "And it's probably going to be the same weapon they will use on you." He turned towards the Centurion who had been bandaging his arm. "Get back to work."

"I am fine with that just as long as you die first," Collins replied.

* * *

><p><strong>Base Camp, 505th Mechanized Infantry Brigade<strong>

"This turning out to be a really great friggin day," Braxton muttered as he unscrewed the cap from the ten liter container of antifreeze before sticking a throw-away paper funnel into the radiator hole. Well, at least the medics said Jennings would live so it wasn't as bad as it could be. He glanced up towards the sky, watching as more debris from the battle burned up as it entered the atmosphere. _Hope we don't get something big hitting anywhere near here. _

"Braxton, how soon to you are ready to move out?" Torres asked as walked up beside _Gabrielle._

"Another fifteen, twenty minutes sir," Braxton said. "We going to secure that crashed carrier, aren't we?"

Torres nodded. "And satellite recon reports a large Zerg force is also heading for it as we speak."

* * *

><p><strong>Author's note: <strong>When Mujawar refers to Confederate _Leviathans_ that is not me being lazy. Starcraft lore states that the battlecruiser class that preceded the _Behemoths _in Starcraft 1 was called the _Leviathan-_class. Now some people have asked how Cavil could get away with shooting Caprica Six in the face, despite her status in Cylon society. Good question. Cavil is both arrogant and impulsive enough to do something like that; also with the Resurrection tech death doesn't have the same impact and meaning on Cylons as it does with humans, so Cavil's action is more in line with hitting some one in the face hard enough to knock a few teeth out then something really major and permanent.

Also, let's not forget the Ones reprogrammed the rest of the models, erasing their knowledge of the Final Five and reprogrammed the Final Five with false memories. Who is to say that they didn't make the other models more obedient and susceptible to their orders at the same time? Not enough to completely eliminate their free will (as evidenced with the outbreak of the Cylon Civil War in the last episodes of the series) but enough that it takes a lot to push the other models into open rebellion against the Ones. Cavil is certainly enough of a control freak to do something like that. As for the Dominion Navy thinking the Cylons and Colonials are one and the same despite different design philosophies in their fighters; yes they did notice the different design philosophies in the Raiders and the Raptors. But the Viking and the Wraith have very different design philosophies despite being used by the same side and being in service at the same time in _Wings of Liberty_; so they didn't think too much of it.

**Addendum (02/25/14): **At the suggestion of Brellin and the rest of the guys at Spacebattles forum, I reworked the _Long's _death scene and modified the composition of the Dominion Fleet a little bit to more accurately reflect the Dominion's manufacturing capacity.


	6. Interlude

**Excerpt from:**

_**To Crown the Stars: A History of the Terran Dominion Navy**_**(3****rd ****edition, 2658)**

_**Chapter 8: The Cylon Wars**_

Following Kerrigan's invasion of Korhal it became abundantly clear to the Dominion High Command that their current generation of capital ships was severely lacking. The _Gorgon-_class battlecruisers' combat performance, on which such high hopes had been placed, had proved to be rather uninspiring. Kerrigan personally destroyed each of Warfield's seven _Gorgons_ using scourges in the Bone Trench near the Dauntless Plateau. The _Pride of Augustgrad-_class also proved to be no match for Kerrigan's Zerg Swarm, with Zerg Leviathans summoned by Kerrigan decimating entire squadrons.

At the same time long-range reconnaissance, coupled with attempts to establish diplomatic relations with the United Earth Directorate, had confirmed the Dominion's worst fears. The UED Expeditionary Fleet that had ravaged the sector during the Brood War had indeed been but a small part of the Directorate military and that its military equipment hadn't been the best the UED had to offer. Indeed many of the weapons and platforms used by the UED Expeditionary Fleet had been locally produced equipment that had underwent upgrades and modifications by the UED during their incursion.

Likewise, the UED had a population of one hundred and thirty-two billion people at the time; Dominion population as of 2505 was believed to be about seventeen-point-eight-billion (though this number is difficult to substantiate due to records being lost in the Second Great War, some estimates put the Dominion population at the time as being only fifteen or sixteen billion). Total population of the Korpulu Sector was estimated to be a little fewer than twenty billion. Luckily, frequent colonial uprisings and insurrections required a sizable chunk of the UED military to be dedicated to pacification and counter-insurgency duties; preventing its full might from being deployed in the Korpulu Sector.

As more reconnaissance reports came in and efforts to embed spies into the Directorate finally began to bear fruit, it became abundantly clear that the Terran Dominion couldn't match the UED naval building programs ship-for-ship. At the same time, new ships were needed, ones capable of taking down Zerg Leviathans single-handedly and decimating Zerg swarms should hostilities break out (though Kerrigan's control of most of the Zerg made this unlikely at the time). In the early months of 2506 the Ministry of Defense's Ship Design Bureau, in conjunction with the Weapons Development Bureau (now headed by Egon Stetmann, personally appointed to the position by Emperor Valerian), began work on a new generation of ships designed to counter any potential UED and Zerg incursion. At the same time, upgrade programs were undertaken to strengthen the Dominion's strike-craft.

The Triple-Nine Fleet Program was proposed by the Ministry of Defense on December 6, 2506 and approved by the Senate on January 9, 2507; authorizing the construction of nine battleships, nine fleet super-carriers and nine heavy battlecruisers (hence the plan's name) along with eighteen heavy cruisers, thirty-two light cruisers and sixty-three destroyers. The first hulls were laid down in the Ursa Shipyards in May of that year. The Triple-Nine Plan was followed in November 2508 by the Kruger Plan, authorizing the construction of an additional twenty battleships, twelve super-carriers, thirty-four heavy battlecruisers, twenty-one heavy cruisers, thirty-four light cruisers, thirty destroyers, twenty-eight arsenal ships and fifty-two planetary defense ships (also known as super-monitors)...

* * *

><p><strong>Table 8A: Dominion Fleet Composition at the start of the Cylon Wars<strong>

**Battleships:** 18 operational, 2 working up, 10 under construction

**Super-carriers:** 11 operational, 1 working up, 9 under construction

**Battlecruisers:** 89 operational, 8 working up, 22 under construction

**Heavy cruisers:** 151 operational, 11 working up, 15 under construction

**Light cruisers:** 238 operational, 4 working up, 24 under construction

**Destroyers:** 334 operational, 5 working up, 48 under construction

**Planetary defense ships:** 31 operational, 3 working up, 18 under construction

**Arsenal ships:** 28 operational

**Planetary assault ships:** 42 operational, 2 working up, 2 under construction

**Fleet auxiliary ships:** 141 operational, 10 working up, 12 under construction

* * *

><p><strong>Table 8B: Technical Specifications (Triple-Nine and Kruger Plan)<strong>

_**New Gettysburg-**_**class battleship**

**Length: **1658m

**Width: **484m

**Height:** 190m

**Crew Compliment: **6,200

**Armament:**One Type VI Yamato cannon, sixteen 800mm Hell Hammer rail guns (mounted in eight dual turrets), sixty-four ATA/ATS laser turrets, twelve ITS-21 ion cannons, one hundred AMF -11 point defense laser batteries, twenty-four J32 ship-to-ship missile launchers, thirty-two J38 counter missile / anti-fighter missile launchers,

**Strike-craft compliment:** 3 squadrons

**Power plant:**4 Bellerephon CZW Cellular Reactors

**Armor: **4m (average) layered regenerative biosteel, neo-steel

* * *

><p><em><strong>Leyte Gulf-<strong>_**class super-carrier**

**Length: **1850m

**Width: **501m

**Height:** 200m

**Crew Compliment: **7,500 (including strike-craft pilots)

**Armament:** one hundred and fifty AMF -11 point defense laser batteries, sixteen J32 ship-to-ship missile launchers, fifty-two J38 counter missile / anti-fighter missile launchers

**Strike-craft compliment:** 12 squadrons

**Power plant:**4 Bellerephon CZW Cellular Reactors

**Armor: **4m (average) layered regenerative biosteel, neo-steel

* * *

><p><em><strong>Fenris-<strong>_**class heavy battlecruiser**

**Length: **972m

**Width: **325m

**Height:** 100m

**Crew Compliment: **4,800

**Armament:**One Type VI Yamato cannon, forty-eight ATA/ATS laser turrets, sixty AMF -11 point defense laser batteries, four ITS-21 ion cannons, twenty J38 counter missile / anti-fighter missile launchers, four AST-20 plasma torpedo launchers

**Strike-craft compliment:** 2 squadrons

**Power plant:**2 Enlightened Dynamics A1C Anti-Matter Reactors

**Armor: **3m (average) layered regenerative biosteel, neo-steel

* * *

><p><em><strong>Gorgon-<strong>_**class battlecruiser (B series)**

**Length: **680m

**Width: **228m

**Height:** 68m

**Crew Compliment: **4,100

**Armament:** One Type VI Yamato cannon, fifty-four ATA/ATS laser turrets, forty-eight AMF -11 point defense laser batteries, twenty J38 counter missile / anti-fighter missile launchers, thirty J32 ship-to-ship missile launchers

**Strike-craft compliment:** 2 squadrons

**Power plant:**2 Enlightened Dynamics A1C Anti-Matter Reactors

**Armor: **2.5m (average) layered regenerative biosteel, neo-steel

* * *

><p><em><strong>Behemoth-<strong>_**class heavy cruiser (D series)**

**Length: **480m

**Width: **126m

**Height:** 54m

**Crew Compliment: **2,100

**Armament:**One Type V Yamato cannon, thirty-four ATA/ATS laser turrets, twenty-eight AMF -11 point defense laser batteries, 8 J32 ship-to-ship missile launchers, twelve J38 counter missile / anti-fighter missile launchers

**Strike-craft compliment:** 2 squadrons

**Power plant:**2 Bellerephon CZW Cellular Reactors

**Armor: **2m (average) layered regenerative biosteel, neo-steel

* * *

><p><em><strong>Sultan-<strong>_**class light cruiser **

**Length: **354m

**Width: **56m

**Height:** 24m

**Crew Compliment: **780

**Armament:**twenty-four ATA/ATS laser turrets, eighteen AMF -11 point defense laser batteries, twelve J38 counter missile / anti-fighter missile launchers, two AST-20 plasma torpedo launchers

**Strike-craft compliment:** 1 squadron

**Power plant:**2 Bellerephon CZW Cellular Reactors

**Armor: **1.6m (average) layered regenerative biosteel, neo-steel

* * *

><p><em><strong>Virginia-<strong>_**class planetary defense ship **

**Length: **251m

**Width: **34m

**Height:** 21m

**Crew Compliment: ** 360

**Armament: **four 800mm Hell Hammer rail guns (two turrets), twelve AMF -11 point defense laser batteries, eight J38 counter missile / anti-fighter missile launchers, four J32 ship-to-ship missile launchers

**Strike-craft compliment:** none

**Power plant:**1 Enlightened Dynamics A1C Anti-Matter Reactor

**Armor: **1**.**2m (average) neo-steel

* * *

><p><em><strong>Texas-<strong>_**class planetary defense ship **

**Length: **251m

**Width: **34m

**Height:** 21m

**Crew Compliment: ** 360

**Armament: **one Type VI Yamato cannon, twelve AMF -11 point defense laser batteries, eight J38 counter missile / anti-fighter missile launchers, four J32 ship-to-ship missile launchers

**Strike-craft compliment:** none

**Power plant:**1 Enlightened Dynamics A1C Anti-Matter Reactor

**Armor:** 1**.**2m (average) neo-steel

* * *

><p><em><strong>Devastator-<strong>_**class missile destroyer **

**Length: **175m

**Width: **23m

**Height:** 14m

**Crew Compliment: ** 240

**Armament:**twelve AMF -11 point defense laser batteries, eight J38 counter missile / anti-fighter missile launchers, four J32 ship-to-ship missile launchers

**Strike-craft compliment:** none

**Power plant:**1 Bellerephon CZW Cellular Reactors

**Armor:**** .**8m (average) neo-steel

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Note: <strong>Somebody asked about ship sizes so I put this together. In Vanilla Starcraft 2 the _Gorgon_-class battlecruisers (referred to in this story as the _Gorgon_ A-series), which includes the _Bucephalus, _is listed as being 560m long and 82.4m wide; _Behemoths _like the _Hyperion _are smaller than that. I think the 82.4m would have been better for the height because they look wider than that. As for ship development, the Terran Dominion is kind of in the same position Japan was before World War 2. The UED has more manpower, more industry, slightly more advanced technology, more resources. They can't match them ship-for-ship so they are starting to do what Japan did: building large high-power ships and looking for ways to level the playing field (like Japan did with the Long Lance torpedo, etc...).

Also, I know I only listed the crew compliment of the _Behemoths' _as 2,100 but I said three thousand people died when the Cylons blew up the _Huey Long_. The reason for that is the _Huey Long _was an older model and didn't have the automation the D-series has. Plasma torpedoes are also mentioned as being mounted on the _Hercules-_class battlecruisers in Starcraft lore. Also considering the presence of energy weapons, force fields, etc… let's just say there is quite a bit of tech disparity between the Starcraft and Battlestar universes. Anyway, I will try to get another chapter out by either Friday or Saturday, don't hold it against me if I don't meet the promise.


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